Chris Brown – the singer perhaps best known for brutally beating the singer Rihanna on the night of the Grammys in 2009 – is again in the headlines due to his violent behavior. This week Mr. Brown, who was recently praised by a judge for having successfully completed a batterer intervention program that he had been sentenced to, appeared on the ABC television show “Good Morning America.” When he was asked about his domestic violence assault against Rihanna, he replied: “I think I’m past that in my life.”
Apparently not. Mr. Brown went on and performed his live song in front of the t.v. cameras, but after that, instead of continuing on with his planned internet streamed performance of another song, he stormed off, went to his dressing room, and proceeded to beat the crap out of it. This one-man riot included his breaking a window with a chair. He ultimately stormed out of the building shirtless. (Apparently his top got lost somewhere during the fray.)
It is very unfortunate that Mr. Brown has personal troubles. We should have empathy for that. But it is even more unfortunate that he chooses to take his personal problems and make them other people’s problems. And it is at that point where our empathy for him should stop.
But what about the batterer intervention program he attended? Hadn’t Mr. Brown just been through batterer intervention? Oh yes, he attended all right – but it would seem that Mr. Brown’s behavior has not changed one bit. Just mention the fact that he beat Rihanna, and what does he do? Goes berserk and destroys his dressing room. Add to this the fact that it was a woman interviewer who brought up something he did not like to hear. This is the exact pattern Mr. Brown showed the night that he beat Rihanna: she had confronted him about cheating or flirting with another woman, and he attacked her. No one much likes to be confronted about bad behavior. But for Mr. Brown, it seems to present an additional problem when the person confronting him is a woman. And for him to respond to a woman’s comments with violence suggests that his batterer intervention program taught him nothing.
Batterer intervention programs tend to approach men’s violence against women with the understanding that this abusive behavior is not just about having a bad temper, but that it is also closely linked to having negative attitudes about women, and to men’s exaggerated sense of entitlement. So along with providing concrete skills for dealing with impulse control, the programs try to re-socialize men so that they unlearn their sexism and begin to see women as equals. It is hoped that this information will lead them to stop believing that it is acceptable for them to try to control women through physical, psychological, or financial means.
Clearly Mr. Brown continues to have trouble with the violence side of things – but what about his attitudes toward women? Did the program counselors get through to him on that level?
Maybe the lyrics to his new hit song “Look at me now” can provide an answer:
Better cuff your chick if you with her
I can get her
And she accidentally slip
fall on my dick.
Allow me to dust off my high school poetry explication skills and examine that verse: “Better cuff your chick” implies that a man should handcuff the woman he is with, a woman who is his property, a woman who is not even worthy of being called a woman… but only a “chick.” Of course, “cuff” also has the meaning of “to strike with an open hand” (as opposed to “punch,” which involves a closed fist.) So the male listener is invited to either handcuff or slap his own girlfriend.
It is important to note that neither of these behaviors is considered acceptable by batterer intervention programs.
“I can get her/and she accidentally slip/fall on my dick” suggests not only that women are promiscuous, but that they also lack agency in their own lives. They will be overcome by Mr. Brown’s immense magnetism. On the other hand, the lines “she accidentally slip/fall on my dick” may also imply that the sex that will occur might not actually be consensual. Mr. Brown seems to be unconcerned about this – or about the woman herself. Women in this song are simply there for him to penetrate with his “dick.”
(And again it must be pointed out that the sexual use and abuse of women are considered utterly unacceptable in batterer intervention classes.)
So it would seem pretty clear that the classes failed Mr. Brown in both ways: he is still violent, and he is still a misogynist.
So what works with violent men? In my work around issues of sexual and domestic violence, I am often asked about what works with violent men. And the answer from the research seems to be: not much. Repeated multi-site investigations show only marginal improvement in men who are violent, and most programs have atrociously high drop-out rates. The psycho-educational approaches that most batterer intervention programs use have little empirical evidence to support them. The same is true for the “narrative” based approaches. As creative as these interventions may be, it turns out that it is a terribly difficult thing to do to try to change a man’s mind or his behavior – especially when he has no genuine desire to change. In my experience most batterers do not want to change – not really. They may be unhappy with the negative consequences their actions may bring, but they are rarely unhappy enough to change their abusive behavior.
A woman I know who runs one such program said that in her opinion, the problem with trying to get men to change their behaviors typically comes down to this one issue: “It is a matter of will, not a matter of skill.” And most batterers, she believes, simply lack the will to change their behavior.
Where to from here? As Chris Brown’s behavior – and the outcome research on batterer intervention classes in general – show, these programs most often have little or no impact on men’s bad behavior. So where should we go from here? Based on the research that shows that these programs have minimal impact, I think we should:
* Stop the use of any public funds to support batterer intervention programs. Take that funding and use it to provide more shelter beds, outreach services, transitional housing, job training, and legal assistance for battered women. These interventions have been shown to be effective in helping women to escape domestic violence. Trying to educate men out of their bad behavior tends not to work. But working to empower women does!
(Many of these programs already do not receive public funds, but instead require the men to pay for the classes. Some argue that this approach puts an unfair burden on low-income men. That may be true, but it also raises the question of whether we should be requiring any men to pay for interventions that do not work.)
* Stop having the criminal justice system refer men to for-profit batterer intervention providers. In many communities, men get sent to these programs. The programs themselves have little or no effect other than to enrich the people who provide the services. At the same time, the battered women’s shelters and crisis lines in those communities are underfunded and must scramble to operate through the use of volunteers and the kindness of strangers’ charitable donations. A better model is one wherein a community’s batterer intervention programs are directly associated with shelters, and any money they make goes to support programming for women.
* Continue with mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence. (But we must make sure that police officers, prosecutors, and judges are all educated about the gendered dynamics of most family violence, so that battered women are not being prosecuted for the times in which they fought back.) Research by Michael Rempel, among others, suggests that the only effective approach to addressing men’s abusive behavior is close supervision of these men by courts and the criminal justice system. Whether they attend classes does not seem to matter.
* Continue efforts to develop coordinated community responses to domestic violence. Batterer intervention will never work if it continues to be treated as a stand-alone intervention. There needs to be coordination from all segments of society -- from law enforcement, from faith communities, from the business community -- that delivers a clear message that domestic violence will not be tolerated. Not in our community!
*Continue outreach programs in the schools that teach girls to be strong and boys to be empathic.
And, finally, we should all stop buying Chris Brown records until he decides to begin acting like a good man, rather than like a spoiled brat who throws a temper tantrum any time things don't go his way.