Chris Brown's recent admission that he lost his virginity at age eight raised plenty of eyebrows, but one key aspect of that story was initially overlooked.
Was he actually raped?
Quoting the singer in an extensive interview, the Guardian (UK) broke the story that Chris Brown lost his virginity at eight years old, to a local girl in Virginia.
She was "14 or 15." Really? "Yeah, really. Uh-huh," Brown grins and chuckles. "It's different in the country," he added, noting his rural upbringing.
Brown grew up with a gang of boy cousins who loved porn and were raring to go. "By that point, we were already kind of like hot to trot, you know?" Chris says.
We don't, really. So, perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that the narrative has shifted in the past few days to whether Brown was raped as a child.
"Chris Brown Didn't 'Lose His Virginity.' He Was Raped," Jezebel declares. "Don't Ignore That Chris Brown Was Raped Just Because You Hate Him," PolicyMic says.
Legally, this is indisputably true.
Attitudes may or may not be "different in the country," but laws in Brown's home state of Virginia say that anyone who has sex with a person under 13 is guilty of rape.
Virginia's statutory rape laws don't even look at children under the age of 13, since "a child under the age of 13 years shall not be considered a consenting child."
Even if an 8-year-old thinks he wants to have sex, he is not legally capable of consenting to it. And rape isn't the only abuse Brown is saying he experienced.
Showing pornography to a child is also considered abusive behavior.
The impact of this story on Brown's behavior toward Rihanna is significant, but not necessarily new. His hardship does not excuse his awful actions.
Chris' stepfather was physically abusive, which undoubtedly makes him prone to abusive behavior himself. His rape/sex tales only fuel that narrative.
What's more interesting is to try to reconcile Brown's own way of discussing what happened to him with the knowledge that he was a victim of child abuse.
By joking and claiming that this early exposure to sex makes him "a beast at it" today, Brown seems to ignore or be ignorant of the fact that he was raped.
Brown might truly have felt like his experience was something to brag about or, perhaps the boasting allows him to see himself as the man and not the victim.
In any case, while Chris' sex claim may be true, it's hard to believe an eight-year-old initiated it or wasn't tremendously confused by what was going on.
That sounds like rape to us. What do you think? And how does it shape the way this entertainer and his present-day actions are viewed in your eyes?
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