BIG HUGE TRIGGER WARNING, OBVIOUSLY.

This past Monday, a woman named Christy Mack took to Twitter to post an almost unbearably disturbing series of photos and an account of a savage beating at the hands of her ex-boyfriend, a mixed-martial artist who calls himself War Machine. In the photos, Mack lies in a hospital bed, her face and legs covered in mottled bruises; her eyes swollen shut, and behind ballooning lips her teeth are broken. Her description of the attack features an enraged War Machine (real name: Jonathan Koppenhaver) arriving at her house in Las Vegas to find Mack with a male friend; after wordlessly beating the other man, Koppenhaver, recalls Mack, “made me undress and shower in front of him, then dragged me out and beat my face,” and also “sawed much of my hair off with [a] dull knife.” She escaped when Koppenhaver left the room briefly, running naked from her house and knocking on doors in her neighborhood.



It’s a story that, to any sentient person, should be sickening, horrifying, and completely indefensible. Because Mack is a former porn star, though, plenty of people in the media and beyond have taken the incident as an opportunity to shame and blame. “That was one facial Christy Mack didn’t see coming,” joked one wannabe Daniel Tosh on Twitter. Someone calling herself “Godsholywarrior” took it upon herself to post some exciting pictures of lakes of fire alongside the tweet “please reconsider your Career and lifestyle if you don’t want to go to hell.” And others replied to her Twitter dispatches with messages so cruel that typing them out makes my fingers want to hurl.

The fact that War Machine is an MMA fighter doubles the blame heaped on Mack, and plenty of people commenting on the story seem to be doing so mainly to shrug, Well, what did she expect? Dispensing wisdom like “You date a knucklehead, you end up getting the knuckles,” these sages efffectively put the onus of the attack on Mack herself, especially given her revelation that this wasn’t the first time she’d been beaten by Koppenhaver. “You decided to push his buttons till you ruined him,” accused one follower. “A lesson learned eh christy” shrugged another. “WHY DIDNT YOU LEAVE?” pressed another women.



The media response, predictably, has been no less pearl-clutching. “Friends say they warned porn star Christy Mack to stay away from violent ex,” tutted Fox News. “MMA Ex Made Rape Joke Months Before Alleged Attack,” reported Hollywood Life. And a few headlines don’t even name Mack, though she’s arguably the more famous of the two; the ever-classy Daily Mail’s reads “Jon Koppenhaver wanted after beating of porn star girlfriend.”

Perhaps it’s true that were Mack not well-known as a porn star and tattoo model, this wouldn’t be such big news to begin with. But coming on the heels of very recent headlines about domestic violence, sparked by a video showing Baltimore Ravens player Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancée out of an Atlantic City elevator—hell, coming on the heels of every media account of domestic abuse ever—it makes sense to be wary of how the media will handle this story. ESPN commentator Stephen Smith, after all, reacted to the Rice news by delivering a monologue about “elements of provocation,” musing on how partners of domestic abusers need to consider their role in perpetuating “wrong actions.”

Though there was an online outcry against Smith’s sentiments, as well as a social-media campaign that led to a one-week suspension from ESPN, plenty of people agreed with him. For every abuser whose actions have been brought to light, whether it’s John Lennon or OJ Simpson or War Machine, there is a chorus of people at the ready to wonder just what “she could have done” to “drive him to it.”

It’s way past time to change that line of questioning, and with recent stories, including Mack’s, there a sense that, perhaps, it can happen, incrementally. It begins when media changes its approach to headlines and framing: Consider the difference, for instance, between the San Jose Mercury News’s “Christy Mack suffers vicious beating, allegedly from War Machine,” and the Huffington Post’s “Porn Star Christy Mack Describes Savage Attack (GRAPHIC PHOTOS)“—one is straightforward and informational; the other leads with Mack’s profession as though that’s the reason she was assaulted, then luridly promises GRAPHIC PHOTOS. (At the end of the article itself, there’s a “Porn Star Gallery”—again, as though porn stardom is the issue here.)



Comments, too, are a place where the narrative can be changed, and it’s heartening to see how many people are wading in to comment sections to challenge ugly sentiments about Mack and other domestic-violence survivors. But it would be foolish to assume that a narrative as ingrained in media as blaming women for their own abuse can change with one or two stories—so as this one unfolds, let’s take care to push back on the shame, the framing, and the stigmatizing that go into constructing the narratives of Mack, and those like her.