Listening To Chris Brown: An Offense To All Women
Listening To Chris Brown: An Offense To All Women
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At a holiday party this year, I noticed an R. Kelly song playing on my friend’s iPod. I looked at two of my (male) friends who were standing nearby and asked, “You guys are listening to R. Kelly?”
One of them responded, “Yeah, so what?”
“I separate the music from the person,” the same friend said.
“Oh god-I’m sure you listen to Chris Brown too,” I said with frustration in my voice.
My other friend chimed in and confirmed, defiantly, “Yeah! I do.”
But, I (and all of us), must draw the line at supporting and enriching men who are pedophiles, in Kelly’s case, and virtually unrepentant domestic abusers in the case of Brown, Sheen, and Gibson. There is a difference between an artist who makes mistakes and an artist who abuses women (or men) and lacks any sense of remorse.
For me, this is ultimately about one question: how can men and women stand by and separate what happened to women like Rihanna, from the women in our own lives? We shouldn’t. In our culture, we tend to compartmentalize the trauma others face as a coping mechanism of sorts. It’s a way to shield ourselves from their pain, and also a way to avoid having to help or being held accountable for not helping.
