The XX Factor: What women really think.

Domestic Violence: Are Girls Just Asking for It?

Domestic violence being an atrocity, I have tried to ignore the rather disgusting “Crihanna” tit for tat that’s competing for shelf space beside Michelle Obama on newsstands across the country. But this new study out from Boston University spun my head:  

Nearly half of the 200 Boston teenagers interviewed for an informal poll said pop star Rihanna was responsible for the beating she allegedly took at the hands of her boyfriend, fellow music star Chris Brown, in February.

Of those questioned, ages 12 to 19, 71 percent said that arguing was a normal part of a relationship; 44 percent said fighting was a routine occurrence.

The results of the survey, conducted by the Boston Public Health Commission across the city and equally among boys and girls, are startling for local health workers who see a generation of youths who seem to have grown accustomed, even insensitive, to domestic violence.

"I think you'd have to be pretty jaded if you weren't startled by it," said Casey Corcoran, director of the health commission's new Start Strong program.

 Maybe. But I have to say I’m not that surprised: In college, I participated in a program called “Community Health Educators” (the founders have scaled up their model via a national nonprofit called “Peer Health Educators” that I strongly endorse). The idea is that, because many local school districts don’t have a budget for health education,  kids not too much older than high school students would travel to local schools—in my case, an urban setting with a mix of white, black and latino students—bearing lectures and props and index cards for awkward questions. And that this would fill the gap. I taught different individual subjects for two years, and in my senior year I had the chance to participate in a pilot program where I’d see the same kids every week, teaching the entire curriculum over the course of ten weeks.

 This preamble is by way of saying that I saw the way 17-19 year olds (in a “second chance” high school, where some of the kids had dropped out or been through the juvenile justice system) absorbed the range of topics we discussed, from contraception (the wooden penis was a hit), nutrition (“sugar is not a food group”) to drug and alcohol abuse (one kid asked us, in the throes of senior spring, if we had ever been drunk). They were on the whole receptive, if restless and often skeptical of our preachy tone. Learning about hallucinogens certainly livened up what could have been an afternoon of trigonometry.

But, far and away, the subject that penetrated the least was our unit on “relationships and abuse.” This dealt with date rape, molestation by adults, domestic violence and bullying. It never sunk in. Worse, while the guys were boorish in the extreme—one male student in one class said if a girl “snitched” on him for sexual assault, “I’d kill her”—the girls, I found, were even more likely to say that a male-on-female altercation involving kicking, punching and hitting was a girl’s fault. (“Why’d she make him mad?” etc.) Even kids who could rattle off the ins and outs of contraception without shame (one girl in my class had a toddler already) regressed mightily when it came to the issue of gender and violence. It was, honestly, chilling. What's that about?