The XX Factor: What women really think.

At Least Tweens Have Rihanna's Back

After reading Dayo's disheartening post on Friday about teenagers' reactions to Rihanna and to domestic abuse in general, I was wondering why female adolescents were so quick to blame the victim. I haven't come up with a particularly good answer but did hear something positive that complicates the matter. I was talking to a social worker friend who works with urban fourth and fifth graders, and she said that Chris Brown and Rihanna came up in class. "They were unanimous in thinking that Rihanna should not have gone back to Chris Brown," my friend said. She asked them if they would think differently had Rihanna hit Brown first, and they said no, because you should never hit a girl. "They all think that men have an obligation not to hit women," she said.

My friend conceded that there might have been a bit of group think going on—that the loudest kids came out against Chris Brown and the quieter ones followed—and that it's possible that they were just parroting what their teachers and moms had told them. But still, being "very very dismayed" at the idea that Rihanna would get back with Brown after he hit her, as the middle schoolers were, is a huge difference from saying "I would have punched her around too," as some high schoolers have been. Do puberty-related hormones make your thinking that fuzzy? Does all self-esteem go out the window between the ages of 10 and 14? At the risk of sounding like an old codger, what is going on with teens today?!