cake-light:

I just cannot with this Rihanna conversation right now. First of all.

I wonder how many times [Rihanna’s] publicist has said, “You know…maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

Do you really think that is what a publicist would say? The publicist probably said YES GO DO IT IMMEDIATELY RECORD IT NOW because a publicist would understand that this song is directly selling the gossip and drama of their history of violence and that that controversy would generate sales.

The idea that Rihanna is going against public or private pressures to work with Chris Brown is 1.) likely wrong, considering the monetary interests of the people influencing her and the public’s bizarre commitment to forgiving Brown and 2.) completely irrelevant, because how a survivor of abuse chooses to interact or not interact with their abuser is none of your fucking business.

And any critique of those railing against Rihanna is met with this vapid “well duhhh, Chris Brown is subhuman, I expect nothing of him. I’m disappointed in her” - as though there has been some monolithic condemnation of him and his actions that obviates criticizing him, as though he has done anything to warrant redemption. And that is the whole problem. That is the definition of victim blaming: you are expecting more from the person who suffered physical violence than from the person who committed that violence. What is worse is that these people ascribe to this thinking (that we should be just as mad at Rihanna as Brown) under the guise of equality, as though publicly ridiculing an abuse survivor while entirely dismissing the abuser is somehow representative of equity or even feminism.