Stirring the Pot

Those of you who know me well know I'm opinionated and can be real loud about it sometimes.  This is one of those times.  It's a-okay if you don't agree with me...I just want you to think about it. 

I'm on Rihanna's side folks.  I  don't know if it's because she's dyed her hair a shocking red and pulling it off, if it's because she has survived and succeeded despite being beaten within an inch of her life by Chris Brown, or if it's just because she's ballsy, loud and unapologetic about who she is.  I respect that in a person.  I like her.


In case you haven't heard, Rihanna's new video, "Man Down", depicts a young woman returning to her home island (we can guess it's Barbados where Rihanna is from I suppose), and ends with her shooting and killing her rapist.  Not in the moment as self-defense, but the next day in a premeditated act carried out in a crowded train station.  People are freaking out.  Groups are requesting it be banned from the air.  Everyone is concerned it sends the wrong message to impressionable young girls.  Here's a news flash for you all - if you are raising your kids right they are not hyper-focused on one particular celebrity to figure out who they are! Does my daughter like some of Rihanna's music?  Sure.  It's how I heard it first.  Am I worried about her grabbing a gun and shooting her ex-boyfriend because he ran his mouth off when she broke up with him?  Uh no.  I'm not.

My initial reaction to the video - which I saw before it went viral and stirred every one's feathers, was along the lines of gorgeous location, gritty story, probably happens.  And I moved on.  Didn't think anymore about it.  I was already familiar with the song.  But here's what got me...I had always assumed she was singing about a man's story of shooting a man down.  Because I don't associate violent gun crimes with women.  There it is out on the table.  My own prejudice.  Something I need to consider.

My question is this...why is it okay to make a full-length feature film about a man taking violent, premeditated murder as revenge against someone who has wronged him or his loved ones (the movies Taken and Unforgiven immediately come to mind), but not okay for a woman to do the same for herself?  It is all fiction after all, is it not?  If we're going to be incensed when a woman does it should we not be just as flipped out when a man does it?  Worry ourselves that people are unable to differentiate between something real and something unreal?  Sure there are dumb people with no judgement, but they're already doing stupid things.  If you're unstable and something is going to set you off it could just as easily be the guy who inadvertently cut you off on the freeway this morning.

I think we should consider the setting of the video.  My guess is that in that part of the world crimes against women are not heavily prosecuted.  As recently as 5 years ago there were still parts of Mexico, heavily populated tourist meccas not little villages, where rape was not considered a crime!  Why aren't these groups up in arms about that?!

My mother was both a hippie and a feminist.  I was raised with the principles of peaceful resistance and female empowerment.  When the other kids on our street played cowboys and Indians I had to come in, it was too violent.  I knew who Phil Donahue, and Gloria Steinem were before I was out of grade school.  To this day I shudder at real life violence and can't stomach much fictional violence either.  I am never going to be a huge UFC fan because it looks like the other guy is getting hurt.  (And they wear really little pants but that's another discussion).  I also believe women have been oppressed for centuries and continue to be oppressed, in varying degrees, all over the world.  

So do I think in real life, the solution, the appropriate justice, for a rapist is murder?  No.  But do I think it happens?  Absolutely.  Probably more so in parts of the world where the criminal justice system casts a cold, uninterested eye at violent crimes against women.

Ask yourself this...would you react differently if a brother or father of the raped girl murdered the man who raped her?  Would you feel like it was okay because he was defending her honor?  Why, then, is it not okay for a woman to defend her own honor?  Is that not just a subtler, more currently acceptable way to oppress women?  Let the men handle it?  Really, this is where we are at as a society?

This morning I read an article online wherein the author asserted that since Rihanna has publicly admitted in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine that she likes to be spanked and tied up during sex that she was being hypocritical in her video by murdering a man who raped her.  Wha?  Is this 1950?  It's okay to rape certain women as punishment for their actions, dress or sexual proclivities?  Rape is about power and violently taking the power from the victim.  It is not about sex.  Yes, women should be mindful of the message they are sending out by the way they are dressed and what they are doing.  But so should everyone.  Would it be okay if I beat the guy in a dirty wifebeater who stank of beer and cigarettes at 8am in the Walmart parking lot?  Is it cool if I whack him upside the back of the head with a bat because he leered at my kid?  No. Nobody deserves violent crime.

I don't approve, condone, encourage or want rape or murder.  But I do think it's okay, important, for Rihanna to stir the collective public conscience.  We all need to consider it, consider our own reaction to it, and consider if we're really all as evolved as we like to parade about.

Love you...now go think!
~S