domestic abuse: definitely not alright.

apparently abc is airing an interview with rihanna tomorrow and there's a preview floating around.

it's a really interesting interview and i was really surprised by what rihanna said about her abuse. i can't even imagine how many female celebrities are abused by their partners, and when it hits the media usually they don't want to talk about it, or people play the whole 'its private, noone knows the whole story."

women who are abused have it hard enough, but someone who gets abused in such a public way-at such a young age-gets it times a hundred. after her attack there were gossip columns saying that she used to pick fights with chris brown, that she hit him first, that she provoked his attack by throwing his keys out his window, or telling him she had herpes. that was the big question: what did she do to deserve it?

so, people made reasons up. it was her fault. this is a common accusation in violent domestic abuse cases. that a woman did something so infuriating that her partner couldn't help but hit her. men being charged for murdering their partners have used this as a defense. the provocation defense. in murder cases, a succesful provocation defense can lower the conviction to voluntary manslaughter because the man kind of had a reason to do what he did.

but rihanna straight up says what happens happens to too many women, that she didn't do anything to "deserve" being beaten, that she went back and shouldn't have, and that girls need to "eff love" when it comes to returning to a violent partner.

she schools diana sawyer when she is asked :"how could it happen to someone so strong?"

rihanna says: "i am strong. this happened to me, i didn't cause this, i didn't do it. this happened to me and it can happen to anybody."

it can and does happen to anybody, regardless of how strong you are. i feel like it's important that rihanna talked about it publicly(and directly) because all too often domestic abuse gets swet under the rug as a "private issue" which makes it practically impossible to address or change.