Well done, Jenny Johnson, for standing up to Chris Brown

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/26/jenny-johnson-chris-brown-rihanna-twitter

Version 0 of 1.

Ah, Twitter. Turn your back on it for a moment and something major happens. Take last night, for example, when comic writer Jenny Johnson bravely risked the ire of millions of tweenage hip hop fans and goaded Chris Brown into deleting his account, hopefully forever, in what was presumably either a toddler tantrum of apoplectic proportions or his PR "people" putting him on lockdown. Unfortunately for us, there is no similarly convenient way to delete his music, but nevertheless there is cause for celebration here.

For those of you who don't inhabit the strange internet universe of Twitter and TMZ, I'll provide some background. Chris Brown is the abusive ex(?)-boyfriend of international megastar Rihanna. In 2009, Brown strangled, bit and punched Rihanna during an argument, the awful effects of which were available for all to see in the widely published police photographs of his girlfriend's bruised and beaten face. Some of Brown's fans, who are known collectively and pathetically as "Team Breezy", couldn't see what all the fuss was about, and took to Twitter to profess their love for their idol in the form of messages whose general gist was "he can beat me all night if he wants". Since then, Brown has pleaded guilty to assault and is apparently undergoing violence counselling, as well as claiming to have changed despite showing absolutely no remorse for his crimes whatsoever (when confronted, his standard response seems to be along the lines of "suck my dick", as happened yesterday).

Meanwhile, he and Rihanna have recorded a couple of duets together, the most recent of which is called Nobody's Business. You don't have to be a genius to work out that the lyrics pertain to the continued speculation surrounding their relationship, a media flame that is kept constantly stoked and burning bright, often by the stars themselves. Rihanna, whose desire to associate with Brown is met with a predictable mixture of dismay and victim blaming, went on Oprah to say that she still loved him, and last night tweeted a picture of him passed out in her hotel room. Those more intent on condemning Brown have called for fans to boycott his "clusterfuck of an album", with little impact. Up until last night, many of Brown's legions of Twitter followers were still eagerly defending him. It is a blessing that he's gone.

But boy did Brown go out with a misogynist bang. After the aforementioned comedian Jones educated him on the correct spelling of "ho" ("it's 'ho' not 'hoe' you dumb fuck"), Brown clearly completely lost it and responded with the hilariously impolite "I should fart while ur giving me top", before adding that his mum wanted him to defecate in her eye. It's all fairly puerile stuff, obviously, but does go some way to revealing the inner workings of the singer's fame-addled mind, which seem to consist mainly of the notion that anyone who disagrees with him should immediately get down on their knees and administer oral. Because that's what you do when you find someone utterly repulsive.

It's obvious that Brown is in possession of what the feminist society at my university once described as a "predatory sense of entitlement" (not to mention some fairly shocking manners). This does not particularly differentiate him from many other men, but it does imply that his attitude towards women is somewhat lacking. Despite this, those intent on blaming Rihanna and her failure to stand up to Brown continue to do so, despite the fact that the difficulties victims of domestic violence face in leaving their abusers are well known. Granted, their continued relationship doesn't send the most positive message to young girls, but the neither does the fact that the coalition government are withdrawing funding from charities such as Refuge. Helping battered and broken women and children and holding their abusers to account has never really been all that high on society's to do list, to be honest.

In holding Brown to account on Twitter, Johnson did what everyone should have been doing for months. Writing opinion pieces hysterically headlined "WHY RIHANNA, WHY?", calling her a poor role model, and documenting every last detail of her relationship is not going to help her. Perhaps telling Brown he's a "useless piece of shit" won't either, but at least it communicates a no-tolerance approach to violence. The fact that more people haven't done this may indicate that they're aware of their complicity. After all, they buy the magazines and maybe even the singles, they click the Mail Online links, and they write the column inches that judge this woman for her inaction. I won't go as far as to call the relationship between Brown and Rihanna a publicity stunt, but it certainly keeps them trending.

To many of us, it is entertainment, it is soap opera, it is tacit acceptance. This latest development merely provides us with another instalment of the Chris and Rihanna show. If we're not going to bother to stand up to this vile man, then perhaps it's time we all stopped watching.