What has to happen to a woman for people to be concerned about her well-being?
This past Tuesday, we learned that Karrueche Tran was granted a restraining order against ex-boyfriend Chris Brown alleging stalking, harassment, and physical assault. I use the word “alleging” loosely because the internet is littered with videos of him forcing himself into her car, threatening iconic supermodels who dare grant her a fan photo and ranting on darkened street corners styled like some character in The Wire that, “I’ll make your life miserable…If I can’t have you, no one can." Though this exact line has been known to be a catalyst right before something unfortunate happens, most of the internet seemed to think Brown's clearly altered state was hilarious. It should be said that all of this has been going down within the two years of her making a public declaration to live her best life off the Breezy train, Iyanla’s couch included.
Even still, public consensus reveal three camps: those who call her a liar, those who profess they don’t care if she’s lying as long as he “stalks and beats them/their lady parts” up too and those that let out a sigh of relief for her safety.
Louis CK once famously joked the biggest threat to women is men. Though he slightly exaggerates, domestic violence against women have become a largely unaddressed epidemic with black women being killed at three times the rate of whites. I’ve long wondered that if domestic abusers repeatedly target women, and women only, at what point are they to be charged with a hate crime? At what point are “anger issues” a misnomer because the offender’s violence is exclusively directed at women? The consensus seems to be that gender-based violence doesn’t exist because women being terrorized is just the natural order of things. Ho-Hum, pass the greens.
In fact, the maltreatment of women is so ingrained in our psyche that in Brown’s Back To Sleep, a song where he implies his peen (and not a goodnight’s rest) is what an exhausted working woman needs, he erratically screams her name in the bridge; taking the confused listener hostage to his personal brand of on-air street harassment. The Game thought it was “funny” and piggybacked on his track "All Eyez" needlessly turning Tran’s name into a battle cry for men who care little, if anything, for women. Both songs broke the top 100 and are still in heavy rotation today. Brown later called Tran a b**ch via Instagram a few months after the song’s release. Old habits die hard.
In a world where Brock Turner (a white man) can be caught in the act of rape and only serve three months because it would impede on his ability to “eat a good steak." Marissa Alexander (a black woman) is sentenced to twenty years for firing a warning shot at a documented abuser, and the president admittedly wants to grope women at will – one has to wonder if any woman can avoid public ridicule for asserting their humanity?
Rhetorical question.
This is all we hear: if you love him, why not help him? If it was such a problem, why didn’t you leave? If you left, why didn’t you go to the courts to get a restraining order if it was that serious? If you got a restraining order, why are you trying to ruin that (black) man’s life?
This latest Chris Brown debacle showcases a cluster fu*k where misogynoir, celebrity adulation and victim blaming intersect to leave Tran holding a familiar trick bag: one where the woman is all at once expected to play the nurturer, the target, the aggressor and the victim. Meanwhile, deluded fans leave hate emojis all over her social media pages.
To his credit, Brown recently diversified his portfolio of attacking women and openly gay men by setting up a very bizarre, highly-promoted fight against rapper Soulja Boy (for liking one of Tran’s photos) involving a whole slew of men-folk who also have a history of physically assaulting women and leaking their personal information.
In the end, though, he canceled the fight deciding the opponent wasn’t to his liking.
Go figure.
