Rihanna-Chris Brown - Don't blame the victim but who IS the victim?

The Reclusive Leftist does not publish my comments, or at least the last 5 or 6 have been deleted without coming out of moderation. Who knows why - RL doesn't respond to my questions. UPDATE: RL did publish my comment finally - don't know what happened previously to the other five comments which were deleted in moderation but feeling silenced was a good thing to motivate me to expand the post below. I guess I am not banned over there. Still, I am now motivated to write more here.

The thing she and other feminists are writing about is of interest to me and that is the Rihanna-Chris Brown case. I want feminists to read my comments to them, so I will publish it here.

If you read RL post's comments, there are women who complain that there is no excuse, don't blame the childhood abuse, don't blame the mother who stayed or the father/abuser, don't blame Rihanna, etc etc.

This is my unpublished comment to all those women.

The reason family history is important is because abuse fills children with a rage they carry their life long. It hard wires people. The rage is about being unfairly treated and being powerless and helpless to stop the abuse. Shame, humiliation, rage and yet "love" and wanting to be loved, needing to be valued by the abuser who has the power of life and death over a child. Learning hopelessness because you can never please the abuser enough, you are never good enough.

People carry that rage they must bury to survive and act on that rage in self destructive ways all their life long because it is subconscious and primitive. If you haven’t experienced it you don’t/can’t understand.

And please don't kid yourself - a man who beats his wife will abuse his children so these kids got a lot more grief than just "watching" abuse. I bet Brown was beaten - repeatedly. Probably Rihanna was also abused. But they were convinced it was appropriate discipline, was for their "own good" and they "deserved it" bla bla bla.

The woman also must have a lot of violence in her family background. She understands it, calls it love. Needs the passion like a junkie. They are both victims and neither is appropriate. They are dancers in a waltz of their own choosing. I learned this after working with BW for many years. There is no victim/abuser split - they are both active participants in the dance. The woman who returns after a serious battery is a dancer, a player. The woman with children who returns after two batteries is a child abuser.

Why should we label her thus? To protect the next generation from both of them.

The victims are the children and animals who live with them. In the case of celebrities, the victims are those who follow their example. The real abusers are the family members who put these children into the abusive patterns they will struggle with for ever.

Now I did not have the space at RL to say that yes, there comes a time where we are accountable for our own choices but it is important to understand that in domestic violence cases we are fighting with impulses that are part of our personality at the elementary level -- instinct/ reaction - add stress to that and individuals will need outside intervention to gain control. They will self-medicate without the help of experts in the abuse dynamic.Now is the time for the state to order that help FOR BOTH PARTIES.

None of this applies to the situation where one party wants to escape with or without children and is being prevented or stalked by an abuser. Or where a woman realizes the abuser is dangerous and is making plans to escape. That is the situation where women are killed. Unfortunately, it often takes many years of the dance before a non abuser really can sustain leaving. And it should then be done with help from BW Shelters and family if they support her because it is a dangerous thing to do. Often the danger is underestimated by a woman and the legal system. Sometimes the legal system, and always the family court system actually supports the abuser and his right to (abuse) the children. This is all true and why women with children are trapped in DV situations.

The family history is not only important to understand but the family should be held criminally accountable and of course they never are. Rape a child outside the family you might go to jail; rape your daughter, you will be reunited with your victim by child protection services. Listen to the families explain, deny, blame, minimize, and condone. This is how both these children were conditioned and exploited.

The abuse dynamic is an addiction to dominance submission acted out between parent and child with spankings followed by declarations of love and by extreme forms of discipline resulting in lifelong rage;like drug addition, alcohol addiction, any addiction. There are many relapses. Eventually, you can free yourself somewhat but never totally because the rage never goes away.

Prevention of rape and femicide and battery is all about ending child abuse. This is the root of the problem and the root of the answer.

Feminist need to get smart about this and stop doing our own versions of denial. Prevention only works when it is based on hard understandings of the roots of the dysfunction. First, women should be taught that it is never acceptable to breed with an abuser. That in itself is a form of child abuse. If he becomes abusive during the pregnancy or afterward, the children must to be removed from his orbit. Incidents must be reported, a record established. We need to recognize that women who are beat as children will beat their own children or fail to protect and hold them accountable as well as male abusers.

I am advocating for Children’s Villages, not foster homes. Children’s Villages where no child is abused and adult professionals are employed in three shifts to form families in units. Places where parents counseling and treatment can be monitored.

Oh, too radical you say. Check on the web to see how many pedophiles live in your neighborhood. Multiply that by four for domestic abuse. Either we start to apply radical solutions or we will lose.