Domestic violence and the domino effect of decisions, especially if you're Rihanna

Police photo of Rihanna following the assault on Feb. 8, 2009.

Just after midnight on February 8, 2009, pop superstar Rihanna and then-boyfriend Chris Brown inked a shameful page of pop culture history, the story indelibly summed up with the now-infamous police photo of Rihanna’s bruised and bloodied face, courtesy of Brown’s bad temper.

Nearly four years have passed since Brown was charged with assaulting Rihanna viciously in his car, and the two have gradually shed concern about hiding their persisting romantic connection. One visit to the Bajan singer’s Instagram reveals just how close they are, with the two entertainers’ private moments shared, ever so casually, with Rihanna’s nearly four million followers.

Unlike most domestic violence victims, Rihanna’s plight was witnessed by the world, as was her return to the partner who hit her. Rihanna is a high-profile reflection of innumerable women facing difficult decisions—except, unlike many other women, nothing is pinning her to Chris Brown aside from her own desire. Rihanna is not financially dependent on Brown, or any other person for that matter. They have no kids, and certainly no marriage. She’s gorgeous, talented, and wealthy. If she chooses to publicly embrace a person who once reduced her face to a series of gashes and welts essentially in front of the entire world, then to younger, more naïve, and less affluent people with fewer resources—what’s the occasional slap or shove?

What Rihanna is saying, quite effectively albeit unintentionally, is that despite boundless resources and unrelenting support, sometimes a person will still return to the arms of the one that’s hurt them. Or in Rihanna’s case, one that’s repeatedly and mercilessly punched them in the face, causing their mouth to fill with blood.

Rihanna in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year, Rihanna explained how she strangely felt protective over Brown after he assaulted her. “He made that mistake because he needed help, but who’s going to help him?” the singer tearfully asked on the special that aired August 19. “I was hurt the most. Nobody felt what I felt.”

That solipsistic outlook is something that 23-year-old Vanessa*, who is just one year younger than Rihanna, was no stranger to. In 2009, at the time that the singer’s battered face became etched in society’s collective psyche, Vanessa had been dating Tim* for almost two years.

“He was very handsome and very sweet when I first met him,” said Vanessa, who was 17 at the time. He was 21. She was enraptured by his beautiful teeth and by the fact that he owned his own car. After they began dating, the sweetness soon dissipated into acts of rage and irrationality. About six months into their relationship, Tim found a photo of himself in Vanessa’s car and became furious. He accused her of wanting to put pictures of him on the Internet, something he was vehemently against—because he was maintaining other romantic relationships as well, Vanessa later found out.

“He balled the picture up, threw it in my face, then picked it back up and shoved it in my mouth,” Vanessa said. “I kind of overlooked [the incident] because I was afraid. It was just too weird.”

Tim was not apologetic, either. His response to the incident: “Don’t have pictures of me and it won’t happen again.”

Though she never snapped another photo of Tim, it did happen again, most severely on Valentine’s Day of 2010. “Snowpocalypse” was ravaging the East coast, and Tim’s car became stuck while parked outside of Vanessa’s house, which he adamantly blamed on her. He demanded that she get his car out, and after attempting to dig his car out of several inches of snow and ice for an hour, Vanessa gave up. When she returned inside, he accosted her in the kitchen and choked her. She ran upstairs to lock herself in her bedroom, but he pursued, and the situation was eventually “settled” with sex.

Vanessa also recalled a situation where she accidentally knocked a lollipop out of Tim’s mouth, and he immediately slapped her in the face. She says the physical aggression was few and far between, making it even harder to pinpoint the exact moment she’d let go and leave.

There was no breaking point, no one moment that pushed Vanessa over the edge. She gradually cut off all romantic ties with Tim on her own accord, simply deciding that his positive qualities, if any, were not enough to justify the ugly ones.

“I think there’s this attitude where you accept something because you think it’s how it’s supposed to be,” Vanessa said. The irony is that Vanessa still maintains a casual friendship with Tim, who shares similarly unsettling details of his new relationships with her. His despicable actions are never addressed, and his continuing to casually behave the same way is either a statement of obliviousness or complete disinterest.

As with Tim’s response to his aggression, Brown’s collective response to his assault of Rihanna, particularly to critics, has been one of flippancy and disrespect. The public apology he issued post-incident is hardly an indicator of his remorse, as his actions are speaking far louder.

Unsavory publicity seems to have become a staple of Brown’s career: angrily bashing windows at daytime talk shows, getting the face of a beaten woman tattooed on his neck, participating in bafflingly immature and sexist Twitter arguments. He is by most accounts uncouth, and, to borrow from Rihanna’s latest album, unapologetic. After Rihanna’s emotional interview with Oprah, Brown’s response in so many words: That’s old news, so stop crying about it.

Chris Brown does not present himself as a good person, and furthermore, shows no sign of a behavioral metamorphosis. Rihanna’s insistence on affiliating with him is damaging and dismissive, and makes a huge statement about how women are encouraged or expected to respond to domestic turbulence.

After all, Vanessa’s face never looked anything like Rihanna’s on the night of February 8. 

The physical, outward toll of the abuse Vanessa experienced over the course of a few years paled in comparison to Rihanna’s one brush with domestic violence, and it is strangely understandable how someone in her situation may choose to stick around despite red flags.

Rihanna and Chris Brown photographed at a club in Sept. 2012.

The men who are domestic violence perpetrators will likely always behave the same way, either because they do not know or choose not to know that it is a huge problem. Many of these men have cemented abusive behaviors as the norms in their lives, possibly having witnessed similar dynamics in their households as children.

To a great extent, behavior that we label “domestic violence” is learned behavior, according to Washington, D.C. based psychotherapist Dr. Patrick Gleason, PhD., who has had experience working with both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence. 

“People learn how to hurt one another,” he said. “It’s not that some people are born that way. We teach one another. Many of the clients I’ve worked with grew up in households where there was domestic violence and they witnessed it. [These kids] are the victims we often forget about.”

Some women will leave dangerous relationships, but others will stay. Rihanna, by choosing to ultimately stay, has set a complicated standard for young, impressionable fans in relationships like Vanessa’s.

Of course, by the same logic of learned behavior, healthy relationship behaviors can be learned as well, attaching a precarious level of importance to setting positive examples for adolescent observers. Peer influence also seizes a slice of responsibility, as shown in a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in February.

Researchers from the Department of Sociology at the University of Iowa conducted a longitudinal study of domestic violence perpetrated by young men, examining male subjects originally in grades 7 through 12 and interviewing them about their sexual relationships seven years later. The study examined the correlation between having an affiliation with violent peers during adolescence and perpetration of domestic violence in early adulthood.

Results from the study showed that males with smaller circles of friends were less likely to be violent in relationships. Males with large groups of friends, 13 or more, were over five times likelier to be violent in relationships. This is because, according to the study’s researchers, large homogenous networks act as a primary context for social learning. The more friends a young man has, the likelier it is that one is violent, and as the old axiom goes: Monkey see, monkey do. The effects of the behavior we are surrounded by in our adolescence leave an ineradicable mark on us. The study concluded that school interventions targeted at male fighting could reduce risk of domestic violence perpetration.

So what about Chris Brown, whose adolescence was just a tad different from the average guy's? Thrust into the limelight at such a young age, perhaps he never really had the guidance or example he needed to establish a sane, calm demeanor. And Rihanna—the same can be said for her. Bad influences abound, and countless "friends" acting as socializing forces, is it a wonder the two experienced tumultuous times? Called “unhealthy” by a source close to Brown, their relationship is bad business to incalculable critics, likely including friends, family, and fans alike. If it was of any interest to either party, the two stand to gain much moral and ethic clout by disentangling their identities from one another.

Since separating from Tim, Vanessa has been able to take part in happier relationships. Her theory on why he occupied such an abusive identity: because he could.

“I think he was just very insecure,” Vanessa admits. 

It is difficult to surmise whether insecurity always plays a factor in instances of domestic violence, but the one common denominator for domestic violence victims and perpetrators alike, according to Dr. Gleason? Everyone suffers.

Everyone suffers, and not everyone's suffering can be heard, recognized, and addressed. Rihanna has the power and the publicity to make a persuasive statement to the Vanessas that remain with their Tims, hoping fruitlessly that things will one day be better.

*Names have been changed.

The third wave 'feminactivist' and why bands won't make her dance

Danielle “Uni” Simms was just a baby when the infamous Riot Grrrl revolution exploded in 1991, but the do-it-yourself, fuck-you-I’m-a-girl values from this era have distended from her heart and mind like a bright, sparkly, ultra-feminist appendage. Now 21 years old, Uni is busy preparing for her Nov. 3 event It’s a Grrrl, heavily influenced by her riotous 90s counterparts.

It’s a Grrrl is “a girl power party smashing patriarchy, spreading feminist thought and celebrating our womanhood,” according to hot pink flyers, reminiscent of handmade feminist zines, adorned with feminine floral designs and the faces of women like Frida Kahlo and Courtney Love. Uni looks like none of these women. She is rocking a curly blonde bush, septum piercing, and round, green-tinged sunshades. Her matte red lips match the demureness of her loose knit sweater—she doesn’t look like a feminist. That, according to the ideals of the third wave of feminism, is because there is no way to describe how a feminist looks. They are all different in both image and in ideology: third wavers have no centralized goal to achieve for “women” as a sweeping nomenclature.

Uni is a part of this wave that has come to understand the importance of incorporating socioeconomic, racial, and other defining factors into their understanding of women’s issues. Feminism can take on different meanings according to people’s different experiences, qualities, and ideas. For Uni, being a feminist involves three main things: doing, creating, and educating. She is a ‘feminactivist,’ a hybrid of two obvious and self-perpetuated titles.

An artist and part-time nanny, Uni considers her ultimate job title to be “creator.” Her passion to create has permeated all aspects of her life. “If I don’t do it, I feel like I’m not making something of myself,” she said. This resistance to complacency bolstered her ambition to create a free event that would promote awareness of women’s issues in a fun, comfortable, misogyny-free environment.

Instead of a coat check, It’s a Grrrl will feature a “bra check.” Everything will be handmade, according to Uni, who herself is creating a wreath made of Barbie dolls, among other peculiar and meaningful art-installation pieces. She is encouraging others to submit their own posters, poems, letters, and artwork for the event. “If you’re familiar with the Riot Grrrl scene, everything was self-created,” Uni said. “So that’s how the aesthetic [of It’s a Grrrl] is going to be: sparkly, girly, but at the same time very raw. Like ‘fuck you if you don’t like it’ type of shit.”

Modestly tending to a Jack Daniels and ginger beer at U Street’s Tap and Parlour, Uni explains how her insatiable hunger for education is best fed through women’s rights activism and feminist work. She is a petite girl, but the conviction in her words boast the strength of several feminist armies. F-bombs escape her lips about as frequently as the Red line comes during rush hour in D.C. She is as cool as a non-phallic cucumber, even when recalling days of being bullied by other girls throughout her childhood. Her personal experiences with what it meant to be a girl—getting her ponytail cut off by a girl classmate, enduring constant harassment and catcalling from dozens of guys in the span of a block—further motivated Uni to cling to her pursuit of feminist education. “I’m always creating, always putting something out there,” she said. “The reason I like [what I do] is because I am educating others as well as…myself.”

In as much as words can hold clout without action, a feminist cannot truly retain such a role without also being an activist—putting those beliefs to work tangibly. A complacent feminist is not a feminist at all; she is a fly on the wall at a patriarchy convention, complicit with the metes and bounds she has been assigned as a woman via inaction. Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress, once said that “emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It’s a girl.” This pervasive system of gender bias is something Uni acknowledges, and aims to upset through educational events like the one named after the tail end of Chisholm’s famous quote.

Wistfully gazing out into the graying September sky through the bar’s window, Uni offers her opinion on everything from raunchy video vixens to the role of social media in spreading a message. The overarching emphasis seeming to simply be on awareness, Uni insists that “we all just need to know what’s fucking going on”—something It’s a Grrrl aims to assist with.

“Our generation has so much information and so many resources, but how are we going to use them?” Uni asks, her drink barely halfway gone. “[We have] so much knowledge…[because] everyone’s learning at faster and easier pace, but what are we going to do with what we have?”

If Uni’s event were a cocktail, it’d be one part Chisholm, one part Riot Grrrl, and a splash of her godmother, who raised her to enforce rigid standards in the respect she both imparted on and expected from others. “She respected herself so much,” Uni said. “That’s the basis of how I feel I should be treated, and it expanded to other women as well. What also inspired me is that I know so many great women, [and my godmother made me feel like respect] should just be a given.”

Discussing respect, Uni arrives to the topic of a video she recently viewed online of a Sept. 15 performance at N.Y.’s Tammany Hall, in which two ballerinas perform to Juicy J’s “Bands A Make Her Dance.”

“These are professionally trained ballerinas dancing to a song that objectifies women,” Uni said. “You’re tying the culture of hip hop to ballet, I get what you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to uplift a culture, don’t use a song…[that’s] about giving girls money to strip and dance. [The ballerinas] think they’re just dancing and showing their ballet skills, but there’s so much more to it.”

And that’s what It’s a Grrrl will explore: the less prominent nuances of misogyny, and equally as important, how women are themselves exacerbating an undesirable situation.

“There are a million ways to express and empower yourself, to be sexy and be confident,” Uni said. “Sex sells and that’s cool, but it’s a battle between doing a split and pointing at your pussy, or you know, smoking a cigarette in a beautiful fucking outfit, or wearing a bikini [on the beach] somewhere reading a book. That’s sexy, too.“

It’s A Grrrl will take place on the first Saturday of November from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Mova Lounge, a nightclub venue that’s been responsible for hosting a number of LGBT-oriented nights. This location was of special importance to Uni, since she is extending invitations to those both born and identifying as women. “I really want it to be somewhere where they’re going to be accepting of that,” she said. She is also looking forward to the possibility of making this event the first of many, depending on the success of the pilot party next month.

Uni is also cognizant of the potential criticism she may receive for catering this event to just half of the gender spectrum.

“I knew there’d be people who would think it’s sexist to not invite guys,” she said. “A lot of people think feminists hate men, and we don’t want them around, but it’s not that. In terms if being practical and getting the message across [with this event], it only makes sense to have women there that can understand what I’m talking about. If this thing goes well, I want it to be an ongoing thing, then I can think of how I can implement men. I want the women to be comfortable, so it’s strictly an empowering event for women. In the future, we’ll worry about the guys. But for now, women first.”

Each wave of feminism has drenched its generation’s participants in notions of equality, ability, and freedom—but the fundamentals of feminism remain for the most part in our society, eluded. Some say the feminist revolution has acquiesced into a cesspool of generally satisfied women. Besides, something that isn’t broken, according to the old axiom, does not warrant a fix.

American women today can certainly enjoy many liberties that they previously could not, but institutionalized misogyny still keeps many women at bay from their full potential, perhaps with their unknowing consent.

“We’ve come to a place where we feel like we’re good,” Uni said. “We can work, we can vote, we can wear whatever we want. From the outside it looks cool, but when you get to the underlying things, you start to see how it’s not. We have to get inside people’s minds, and understand how they think about women, and the unconscious things they do.”

Finally polishing off the last sips of her drink, Uni dishes out her sentiments on the attention paid to women’s rights and feminism amongst her peers, saying that enthusiasm seems to be “decreasing, but hasn’t lost hope.”

“It’s simple,” Uni said. “Once women know [about the issues and what they can do], they’re like, ‘Oh shit, I’m game.’ It’s like telling someone there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They’ll go get it, but if they don’t know about it, they won’t.”

Her philosophies are ahead of her time, and more humanist than divisive, despite her current, more narrow focus on celebrating and uplifting women. When asked about her long-term goals, Uni smiles, and suddenly she’s less of a holy figure for feminism and more of just a free-spirited 21-year-old still searching for the ultimate life path that encompasses art, philanthropy, feminism, and activism. “I’m a normal young woman, and my answer is: I don’t know.”

“I know that every time I do something, something else comes from that. So once this event happens, I know something will come from it, and I'll go from there."