“On February 8, 2009, at 12:30am, Chris Brown 
 beat Rihanna’s face into a landscape of craters 
 and bruises. This is the architecture of violence. 
 Later, Chris Brown described their relationship 
 as being similar to Romeo and Juliet’s. 

In 2013, David O. Russell groped 
his niece’s breasts and claimed 
she had flirted with him first. 

In 1965, Sean Connery told Playboy 
there was nothing wrong with beating a woman. 
That “bloody-minded,” “hysterical,” “bitch” 
women should be hit, should be slapped. 

In 2014, Julia Sonenshein wrote an article 
titled “10 Violent Men Who Are Always Forgiven 
Because Everyone Loves Their Art.” 


They say it’s a myth that mother rabbits
abandon their young in their nests 
after their young have been handled 
by humans. That the scent of humans 
will drive the mother away. 
They say it’s a myth. 
And that the young, no matter how battered 
or bruised, will still be accepted 
by their caregivers. 


But in the human world, the rules change. 
After the rape, most of my rapist’s friends 
abandoned me. One claimed I only wanted 
to profit off my art. 


No one considered that blood 
does not make good paint. 
That trauma is an electric chair 
that singes anyone it can reach. 
It wasn’t my art, remember? 
It was his. 
And he was always forgiven 
because they loved his art.”
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This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.