"Teenage Girls Stand by Their Man"

In the midst of prolonged wars and economic collapse, one of the most depressing news was an article in The New York Times, published on March 18, 2009, reporting the reactions of teenage girls to the Chris Brown Rihanna incident. The reactions ranged from speculating the tabloids were false to forgiving Chris Brown because he had witnessed his mother being abused to completely excusing his reaction because “she probably made him mad”. The saddest part of the article was when students nodded in agreement that Rihanna “deserves it for being so jealous”.

I am sorry, but NO ONE deserves being repeatedly beaten, bitten, and choked so severely that they had to be hospitalized. I don’t care how jealous they are. Even if a girl was off her rockers and attacked a guy, more often than not he could restrain her. If he could not, run away. I will even understand hitting back once to get away but beating a girl is utterly unacceptable. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE.

It saddens me to see that there are girls out there that would tolerate physical abuse. Any form of abuse is not acceptable. Mental and emotional are often hard to identify. Physical is obvious. RUN AND DON’T EVEN LOOK BACK. The article tried to explain the girls’ lenient reactions with restraint of judgments, “learned social signals”, aggression of the commercial hip-pop culture, “parity”… There is nothing fair about a much stronger person beating the pooh out of someone that does not have a chance of fighting back (guy or girl). Yes, maybe we need to understand where these girls are coming from to change their minds. At the same time, social norms are powerful and effective in altering opinions and behaviors. We need to all stand up and SCREAM, “NO MORE VIOLENCE, please”. That should be our new norm and we will not accept anything less. We can talk with people around world with only seconds in delay. We can put people in orbit around the earth. Put down the clubs. The era of the caveman is over.