LOS ANGELES—When it comes to blaming victims of domestic violence for the brutality perpetrated on them, we are not particularly evolved as a species. If the Christy Mack story reveals anything, it is that we remain wired to blame, as if we can't help ourselves. The bare outlines of a relationship are thrust before us, new details emerge that are verified or not, and, combined with what we think we know about the types of lives the actors in the drama, we judge ... critically, unabashedly and ruthlessly. Sometimes privately, but increasingly in public.
"Umm.. sorry the girl got beat up.. but when you date a man that legally changes his name to 'War Machine'... what were you really expecting?" states one commenter to a Fox News article posted today under the headline, "Friends say they warned porn star Christy Mack to stay away from violent ex."
To be sure, it's mostly anonymous posters who claim that Mack had it coming because of whatever reason they come up with. To my mind, though, these sorts of damaged trolls will always be a factor on the internet, and the only way to do away with them is to do away with anonymous speech altogether, which would be ill-advised.
But a far more sinister form of victim blaming is being perpetrated by people who feel compelled to "tell the truth" about the Mack/Koppenhaver relationship, her role in it, and the fact that "she was warned about him," but she went ahead and put herself in harm's way anyway.
So really, "What were you expecting?"
For the most part, people who comment on the record make sure to say that nothing excuses the vicious beating allegedly perpetrated upon Mack and her male companion by Jonathan Koppenhaver, aka War Machine. But this is precisely where the wheels come off the track in the way we deal with domestic abuse. It's not an easy trap to avoid. I also have explained away violent domestic incidents as the result of a private dynamic between two people, and equated the dysfunction between the participants as evidence of equal responsibility for the violence. I have done that without realizing that I was passively perpetuating the violence.
A similarly thoughtless mindset can be found in the Fox article, which quotes Howard Levine, one of the adult industry's venerable veterans, who worked with Mack, and told the news outlet, "She was warned several times. They broke up a while ago and he moved out of state," and then adding, "He is delusional. He came back thinking he was going to propose to her and they would get married."
Levine is less unambiguous about what he thinks should happen to War Machine, saying of Kopenhaver, "He is an abuser and needs to go to jail for a long time."
To the Fox reporter's ears, Levine in his comments is saying that "Mack should have known he was capable of such behavior." And the next step is to actually impart blame, as is suggested by the headline: "Friends say they warned porn star Christy Mack to stay away from violent ex."
I do not believe Levine meant to cast blame, but that was the message received by the Fox writer, who takes an even deeper plunge into depraved victim blaming by quoting from perhaps the last person who should be asked to comment on abuse of any kind—Nik Ritchie of The Dirty, whose words speak for themselves: "The site obtained pictures of the former couple together post their supposed break-up in bed only a week or so ago, and the two were spotted together recently as a week ago. War Machine reportedly caught her cheating. He thought they were still together. What he did was 100 percent wrong but she provoked him.”
Armed with his "sources" and photos taken after the break-up that Mack says took place in May, Ritchie feels secure in proclaiming that she provoked the beating? This is the same line being promoted by friends of Koppenhaver, who is still on the lam after making the same plea for understanding in his last tweets.
He's 100 percent wrong but she provoked him, so what exactly does that mean? It means only one thing to the person who makes the provocation claim; that she bears responsibility. It can in fact only mean that, or else why say it at all!
That is of course a truly demented point of view, and one that our society has been working to overcome for years. The proof of that can be found on the back of thousands of police cards, on bumper stickers that read, "There is NO excuse for domestic violence." Those bumper stickers have been placed on patrol cars for literally decades.
There is no caveat after the "No excuse." It sits alone as a complete thought. Provocation is not an excuse, and does nothing to mitigate the fact that a crime was committed. I would further argue that the bumper sticker on patrol cars was not done as a lark. Of all the crimes committed, that was the one that law enforcement in this country was so concerned about that they put it on their cars, as a message to all: there is no excuse.
Unfortunately, however, in a world where even the daughter of a beloved actor who couldn't make it to the end is trolled into submission, in a world in which a bottom feeder like Nik Ritchie feels entitled enough to pronounce Christy Mack a provocateur, in the face of attempts to lessen the harm that victim blaming does, we really, truly have not evolved very far.
Yesterday, Samantha Allen posted an article to The Daily Beast titled "Stop Blaming Christy Mack: Porn Stars Don't Deserve to be Beaten," that, like the headline suggests, argues against using Mack's career choice as justification for blaming her for what happened to her.
I thought the piece was thoughtful and sincere, and it's true that some trolls are pulling porn into the equation, but I believe that Mack's chosen profession, despite it preceding every mention of her in the media, pales in comparison to the blame being placed on her for the inexcusable crime of simply being in that relationship. This is hard, because all too often blame (or responsibility) in these situations is not black and white, and people do provoke, and nothing is acheived when the truth of a situation is white-washed for any reason. But I guess the point for me is that the imperative to lay appropriate responsibility wanes when one party decides that violence is the solution to the problem.
The same day as Allen published her article, The Guardian's Jessica Valenti weighed in on the subject in a piece titled, "From the porn star and the MMA fighter to Rihanna and Chris Brown, is a photo of domestic abuse not enough?"
The point she makes—that "Despite having the results of physical brutality in front of our eyes, when it comes to violence against women, seeing, sadly, is still not believing"—contains a disturbing element of truth to it. We tend to see what we want to see, and if a photo or video does not conform with what we want to believe, we dismiss or distort it.
It's a powerful complaint, to be sure, but it also has some holes in it. Photos and video do not always tell a complete story, but are components of a larger narrative that contains physical and other evidence.
Indeed, photos are often used to tell a desired story, even if they do not conclusively prove the story that is being told. For instance, in the Mack situation, a photo taken of Mack and Koppenhaver after the May breakup showing them supposedly happy and together at an event is being used by TMZ, The Dirty and others as proof that, as Nik Ritche put it, "Things aren't adding up," by which he means to say, "Mack is lying."
This is one face of the current state of victim blaming, and frankly, it stinks.
