Chris Brown assaults women. Regularly. Like, all the time. A lot. But if you google “Chris Brown”, the only references to this are indirect: an article that references Rihanna in the headline (which is the third to last result on the page) and one article with the headline Chris Brown: “It Was the Biggest Wake-Up Call” followed by a subline about anger management. The wake-up call referred to is, of course, his particularly public battery of Rihanna in 2009. The same one that left Rihanna’s face looking remarkably similar to the tattoo he got on his neck years later. Somehow, the world is determined to apologize for Chris Brown. Proud feminists like Nicki Minaj still produce songs alongside him. He has a truly fervent fanbase; a quick search of Twitter reveals Chris Brown’s fans openly advocating for and supporting an unapologetic abuser. It’s as though good bone structure and dance skills somehow negate a history of violence against women.
Alternatively, summer of 2016 was a rough year for fans of Johnny Depp everywhere. When abuse allegations by then-wife Amber Heard broke the news, women everywhere were devastated. Certainly, it couldn’t have been the beautiful man they fell for in “Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and were further confused by their undying attraction to in “Edward Scissorhands” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”? The internet quickly jumped aboard a train of justifications. Surely Amber made it up? Or exaggerated? The narrative of Amber Heard as a gold-digging liar, desperate for fame became the prevalent view of the trial and its ensuing headlines. It was an easier pill to swallow to villainize Amber Heard, a celebrity who wasn’t already well known and beloved.Apologizing for abusers is not a phenomenon of the twenty-first century. F. Scott Fitzgerald was more than rumored to have frequently abused wife and muse, Zelda Fitzgerald. Journal entries of his revealed an actual plan for how to initiate one of Zelda’s mental breakdown. “Attack on all grounds. Play (suppress), novel (delay), pictures (suppress), character (showers), child (detach), schedule (disorient to cause trouble), no typing. Probable result — new breakdown.” And yet history remembers Scott as a brilliant novelist and romantic, the hero of many a high school English teacher for his depictions of the human condition, as told through the many “wild” and “crazy” women his male protagonists love.
Power, fame or talent are not worthy trade-offs for human decency. Justifying the actions of abusers on behalf of their body of work or success is an insult to survivors of abuse everywhere. The treatment of these abusers built up on their critical acclaim sets the precedent for how we respond when the average, every day survivors speak up. One in three women and one in four men will be victims of violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. We owe it to each of those women and men to do better.