Sentenced to Community Service at Oprah’s School for Girls

March 11, 2009

My mom sent me this: Women Should Be Hit for Dressing Sexy in Public, 1 in 7 Believe. (That’s 1 in 7 British people).

I can’t help but hark back to a quote from this week’s US Weekly:

But Rihanna’s decision does have the approval of some, including close friend Sharon Bellamy-Thompson. “It’s no problem,” the Barbados fish-market operator tells Us. “I have had boyfriends who beat me and then I took them back. I stayed with them because I was in love.”

chris-brown-rihanna.jpgUm, no. You don’t just quote something like that without following up with, for instance, a quote from a government official in Barbados about how domestic violence is wrong and is being combatted by some government office. Or a mention of battered woman syndrome. Or even just a mention of the fact that perhaps people in Barbados have different expectations about nonviolence in romantic relationships (Do they? I have no idea. But if you have time to go to Barbados and interview fish-market operators, maybe you should do some research). It’s no problem? It’s not a pro and con situation. You don’t just quote a Holocaust denier and then call it a day. Journalists are responsible for context.

Rihanna, although a victim herself, is setting an atrocious example and should be sentenced to forty days of reading empowering storybooks to young girls. Right after her boyfriend is sentenced to actual prison.

p.s. This blog caught the same quote and covered it eloquently. And here is a post with numerous comments ostensibly from Barbadians about domestic violence in their country.

Posted by jen | Filed Under Jen says 

Comments

One Response to “Sentenced to Community Service at Oprah’s School for Girls”

  1. Jen2.0 on March 11th, 2009 7:23 pm

    I could type for days and days about this, but the bottom line is this: I have a TON of work to do when it comes to educating teens about dating violence. The articles that I have read that quote teens as saying she deserved it, to the actual conversations that I have had with local teens is absolutely mind blowing. I’m not even safe from these comments when driving in my own car; kids are calling up the local radio stations to weigh in on the issue, and I have almost wrecked multiple times.

    These kids really believe that 1) Violence in relationships is normal and to be expected, 2) That “she always starts it,” and 3) If she goes back, either it didn’t happen at all, or she deserves whatever she gets.

    The abundance of comments which blame the victim for the attack shows me that teens have no idea how complex abusive relationships really are. Teens see this as a black and white issue, where in reality, there are a million shades of grey in abusive relationships.

    Now if only I could get a radio station to let me come on and do an on-air educational piece, that’d be a pretty sweet start…

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