There’s been a particularly virulent strain of commentary about Chris Brown’s alleged assault of Rihanna. The “debate” goes that Rihanna has an STD and was therefore courting a beatdown. (No links on this one. These folks don’t deserve the traffic.)
There are two major problems with this theory.
First, the Rihanna-has-an-STD thing stems from a series of images of this always-photographed young woman covering her mouth. It’s bad enough to throw someone’s sexual health status around, but to base the throwing on some paparazzi shots?! If you traffic in that kind of shyte, you might as well lick a subway seat, eat pig testicles and take a romantic stroll with the devil while you’re at it.
Even scarier are the threads we’ve seen from seemingly rational men (and the occasional woman) who believe that a woman having an STD counts as an acceptable catalyst for physical violence. That shows a remarkable lack of knowledge about how STDs are transmitted and detected. It also shows just how slippery the slope can get when folks feel victimized by the specter of a sexually active woman. (It’s OK for a woman to writhe around half naked and intimate all kinds of sex, but God forbid she share a not-so-pleasant consequence of doing the damn thing!)
Look, Rihanna is a grown woman. Chris Brown is a…boyman. We think it’s safe to say that neither one of them were virgins when they started their still-undeclared relationship. If one or both of them has an STD, that’s their business.
And there’s just no justification for a man punching, biting, slapping or otherwise assaulting a woman.
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