I am really sad. I think I am mostly angry, but also sad. I think my husband Chris is too, but for different reasons… basically the whole Depp/Heard trial is the main conversation I keep returning to no matter what the original topic was and he keeps receiving similar messages in different tones and volumes. And a lot of swearing.
I didn't really want to comment on it at first because I really try to avoid the urge to have an opinion on everything (in public, if you know me, you know that in private I am definitely ok with that). Also, I didn't feel that I knew enough about this case, but since then not only I have learnt more but mostly I have been increasingly outraged about the way the world is reacting.
I guess I can no longer use Chris alone as an outlet for my rage ,so following my own advice to trust the power of conversations, I am here, in front of the computer, determined to have a conversation with as many of you as possible.
I know that a lot of men, probably a lot of abusive men and the whole manosphere is clapping at the implications of this trial. They were right all along! Women are manipulative gold diggers that abuse men. Women are histrionical liars. Women are as bad as men, actually women are worse. Apparently this believing women thing was going to far (even if the statistics of rape, men violence against women and femicide are quite black and white) and Johnny Depp is the hero they needed to prove just that.
But this is not what this trial is about. Well, it is, under the desguise of being about something else. This case is not about domestic violence. He is not suing her for what she allegedly did, he is suing her for defamation. Despite losing his case in the UK in 2020 when he sued The Sun newspaper for the same reason.
This whole trial is based on an article from 2018 in which she talked about HER experience as a woman victim of domestic abuse in the public eye. She doesn’t give examples of her marriage; she doesn’t mention Johnny Depp. But she dared to speak up about the way society protects men in general, powerful men in particular. She talked about how speaking up means that you are the one in trial, and somehow, maybe unsurprisingly, he felt an urge to punish her for it.
In the case against the Sun the judge determined that 12 of the 14 cases that she brought forward were proven. There was no defamation because there were no lies in the implications. “I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard. … I also accept that Ms. Heard’s allegations have had a negative effect on her career as an actor and activist.” End of story. And that was against a newspaper that called him, identifying him by name, “wife beater”. The case he would need to win now is against an article that doesn’t even mention him. It seems like a long shot.
But in fairness, the money he wants her to pay him or the possibility to win is almost anecdotical. He knows he will most likely lose (and not because the system doesn’t like men to get off the hook) but it doesn’t matter because the aim of this trial is gathering support in the public eye, it is about changing a narrative and mostly is about punishing her and telling the world that she deserved it. That women, sometimes, deserve it.
I am not saying that she didn’t do anything wrong during the relationship, what I am saying is that this is not what is on trial at the moment, although people seem to think that it is. I am also saying that I refuse to participate in a culture in which we blame the victims.
What he did to her is proven by a court of law after a lot of investigation. What she did or didn’t do is irrelevant in this context, unless we want to tell the world that abuse is ok if you deserve it. Unless we are willing to accept the idea of the perfect victim - the maternal one, the caring one, the one that doesn’t fight back. The one that is selfless and easy and submissive and YET she gets abused. Why is this conversation turning into who gets to be socially accepted as a good victim of domestic violence? And how good is good enough?
We see this all the time. A woman gets raped, and society starts questioning if she was drunk, if she had flirted with him, if she said no loud enough. We ask if the skirt was too revealing. Because if any of those were true, or even worse, if all of them were true, then who is she to ruin his life? Why is she not taking her part of responsibility? At the very least her part.
What is important to understand here is the wider implications of this case. It is problematic that to have this conversation at all we have the desperate need to concede that “she too is bad” or that “they are both toxic”. Why do we need to collectively agree that she is awful, before we can even start making our point? Why is punishing her the very minimum required to address any of the other problems if you want to maintain the public façade that you are not going too far? The way this case works, and the way we are all reacting around this case, affects every woman because it fuels the same misogyny that already affects every woman.
This is a very loud message for all victims that says, “are you sure you didn’t deserve it? Are you willing to put your whole life in trial just for speaking up? Knowing that you will be silenced, medicalised, ridiculed, and ostracised. Do you want to speak up that much? Would you take your chances knowing that no matter what the outcome you will always have more to lose than to win?”
And what is even scarier is that this is an even a louder message for all abusers. This trial tells them that they don’t have to put up with women fighting them back, that they can turn this around and still become the heroes of their stories, the ones deserving the sympathy and support. That there is a further outlet to keep women in line. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Marylin Manson, Johnny Depp’s matching-tattoo friend, is also suing for defamation against those who held him accountable.
I have OF COURSE no problem with men who bring forward cases of domestic abuse, I think it takes bravery and vulnerability in a world in which toxic masculinity forces men to never come across as weak, ESPECIALLY never weaker than a woman. I think that men can be victims of domestic abuse by their partners. But again, this is not a case of domestic violence, this is a trial for defamation. What the court is being asked to decide is if Amber Heard knowingly lied in her article, therefore acting in bad faith and damaging his career in doing so.
But to understand this we need to understand that Johnny Depp’s style of work (from hitting a crew member, to arriving drugged and drunk to the studio, or his stupidly expensive demands or the fact that he can’t be bothered learning the lines of his scripts, prefering someone to read them to him through an earpiece) is what has potentially cost Depp his career. Hollywood doesn’t punish misogynistic powerful men, the public don’t stop watching films, or praising men’s arts or their capacity to play a sport “JUST” because they have abused a woman, not even many women. What Hollywood punishes hard is investing money on films that don’t bring the money back, and that was what Johnny Depp was delivering. The belief that women have the capacity to destroy a man’s career with false allegations is just not true. It takes lots of brave women to come forward, to be scrutinised, to show evidence, to be hurt and harmed in the whole process for anything to happen at all. Just for it to be all forgotten shortly after a vague apology. We see it with disbelief time after time. As long as they maintain their capacity to make money they are generally received with “Just stay quiet for a bit, then we will bring you back, with your image restored, you will be bigger than before son, don’t you worry.”
There are so many things that I want to talk about here, so many “LET’S NOT FORGET ABOUT THIS!” really important points. For example, the fact that he was 46, really famous and rich and she wasn’t any of the above and was 23 when they started dating. The fact that he also started dating a 17 year old Winona Ryder when he was 24, a 20 years old Kate Moss when he was 31, and Polina Glen when she was in her early 20s and he was in his mid 50s. Unbalanced power in a relationship is important when trying to put things in context. Why is what Amber did or didn’t do the only context people feel they need to understand the situation?
What about the fact that no normal person, no matter how witty or “abstract” their sense of humour is, sends the horrendous messages that he sent when referring to women. Have we lost all our capacity of react to misogyny to such an extent that we think it is excusable in any shape or form to say “Let’s drown her before we burn her. I will f**k her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead’ or “I have no mercy, no fear and not an ounce of emotion or what I once thought was love for this gold digging, low level, dime a dozen, mushy, pointless dangling overused flappy fish market …”.
He, himself, has admitted how in order to be good he needed to “lock up the monster”. There are texts of him praising her efforts to get him detoxed and admitting how hard it must have been for her and how he wouldn’t be alive without her. We have seen confessions in texts of what it is undeniable abuse YET we feel that we NEED to know what she did too because, there is a possibility that she was as bad (or hopefully even worse), and if that were the case he should be excused of any accountability. Then we can direct our anger and repulsion to her. We can keep talking about how they both deserved each other. How it wasn’t abuse.
It feels that we could talk too about the way her mental health was called into question to invalidate her, including her “histrionic personality disorder’ that among other things included “a lot of cruelty”, “very concerned with her image”, plays “a victim or princess role” is “overly flirtatious” and acts in “an overly girly way” to “avoid getting negative feedback or criticism”. It was common in the 18th and 19th century for women to be diagnosed with “hysteria” when stepping outside out societal expectations… are we really going back to this in the public eye?
And of course we could go on and on about all the many things that are making this trial a misogynistic circus.
It made my stomach turn when I read Javier Bardem’s words, “I love Johnny because he is a good human being, trapped in the lies and manipulations of toxic beings and yet smiling and loving us all in spite of it. How? Through his music, through his acting, through his silence. This means a lot. Thank you Johnny. Millions of others like me love you deeply.”
Javier Bardem, who said, when he was asked about the #metoo movement, that although overall it was positive, we needed to be careful about “online lynching” and talked about the importance letting serious matters be dealt with in court. I guess he meant only for men, because what happens now, when the courts have already accepted as proven 12 cases of domestic violence? What happens when the one at the other side of the lynching is no longer a powerful man but an “easy to hate” woman?
Johnny Depp defended Polanski, He made Marylin Manson the god father of his daughter and tried to buy some nazi memorabilia with him, and in his list of great friends there are other proven abusers… there is a pattern of powerful men defending other powerful men, and this trial is a very obvious way to show how far and low they are willing to go for the world to respect the impunity that they think they deserve for their actions.
I want to finish with the great words of the awesome Clementine Ford who is doing a great job on Instagram covering the whole trial,
“We don’t need men to protect women, we need men to stop protecting each other.”
35 comments
Sorry to answer to this old post, I am out of time.
I am in a similar situation, probably, of you and your partner, but I, instead have decided to never ever speak with my love about Amber Heard because I don’t want to risk that she feel to be judged or attacked by me, exaclty for the reasons you expressed, that I admit in myself Amber represents a sort of “dark icon”: “women can be very good as histrionic liars” to use some of your words. Same reason why I didn’t comment anything in my social accounts, and this is the first time I talk about Heard. Because I know that my thoughts (and emotions) can be seen as a attack on women in general. During my 50 years of life I knew quite some people, femalefriends, women in work field, men with partners, lesbians too, and I can hardly count of two of them that gave me the same… admiration, repulsion and fear that the Amber I saw in the media gave me. For me, Amber is like seeing a tiger. I can admire her strenght, intelligence, but I am convinced she is not authentic, not honest, and not a victim. I hope that any such a smart and cold predator will be never interested on hunting me. I could say the same about a lot of men, by the way. Some people are ready to do everything in their power, as lying or menacing etc, to achieve their goals even when this can ruin the life of somebody else. The two trials didn’t change my opinions on women in general, because I never thought women aren’t able to achieve their goal cynically as men, if they want. Majority of people, though, are good and decent, anyway.
What for me was sadly enlightening was discover 140 feminist movements signed an op-ed in defense of Heard, more on the same direction of your post, even if I found your post more deep and articulated.
What would you think on a man defending a public figure because is a man disregarding what he did?
Because I never did it in my entire life. Never. Not once. For me is inconceivable defending somebody (or attacking somebody else) because he/she belongs to a category I like or dislike. I would feel ashamed of myself. Even though I have strong opinions about categories, for example I hate fascism, violence, I criticize religions, marxism, astrology… But I have a friend far-right: he is a good and respectful person with a grossly stupid political view. I have (a lot) of communist friends: I love them, even if I am convinced they are spreading dangerous ideologies, and the same for religious friends. Every person belongs to a lot of categories, but is not identical of all the billions of other people in those categories. Even in the worst dangerous categories, KKK or ISIS, you can find criminals, people mentally ill, people that reacts with rage to injustice, people simply completely wrong and ingornat but convinced to be on the right… don’t you think?
For me, now, after I discovered the oamberopenletter website I would be a lot more skeptical about those movements, but the fact that my partner is a feminist does not makes her responsible to the bias of the media, and you, for me, are a person that has a wrong perspective. That’s it… Nothing more than that.
Insightful analysis on Depp-Heard trial, emphasizing gender biases and media portrayal. Provokes thought on societal attitudes and justice.
The hypocrisy is so palpable. Apparently ‘female solidarity’ is greater than plain facts.
It is so clear that feminist claims of valuing equality were never the point. They just will not take ownership for the problems in their movement, and that’s why feminism will always be a minority movement; will never gain traction.
A man cannot grow old with a feminist. Feminism is a social cancer.
Poor Chris. I hope he signed a prenup.
WELL DONE FOR THIS! Ignore the haters in the comments. They are fuelled by the same old patriarchy BS and don’t know what they are talking about. Lots of love and strength to you!
My question is what your opinion about amber having an abusive past? Such as getting arrested for being physically towards her then partner? Why haven’t you brought that up? Obviously she has no problem with being abusive towards her ex wife in public so God only knows what she’s like behind closed. The fact she’s being defended is disgusting and a disgrace to feminism as a whole Sincerely, a feminist! 🤍
so are you still venting on poor Chris after jury gave an unequivocal decision? this was a major setback to women but not because of “manosphere” but cause of biased toxic feminists.
You are blaming the victim of abuse. You have become that which you claim to hate.
Clementine Ford thinks “all men should die!”
YOU are a very sick person! No men, no life. NO, you won’t print this.
You claim this isn’t about domestic violence to make the point that Heards claims are true. You then go on to claim that this is a win for misogyny and abusers will be empowered. This implies obviously that it is about domestic violence. You can’t have it both ways.
I agree firstly, this isn’t about domestic violence and it’s not about feminism either. What’s truly most sad about this, is so called feminists such as yourself’claim this is about feminism and misogyny, and this claim completely undercuts the very real misogyny that still exists in our culture, and real claims of rape and domestic violence. This fake outrage crap is why we wound up with Trump. The backlash isn’t against me to as a whole (a real and progressive movement, that has had real backlash by the alt right), it’s against this fake feminist posturing like this article.
You say it doesn’t matter what she did to believe her real claims, and assign her a victim. So using that same logic, it doesn’t matter what Depp did, since he has real claims we can assign him as a victim. Does he deserve the abuse he got then? Did he deserve to lose real work and real money as a victim of domestic violence that was being victim reversed by Heard? Doesn’t he deserve to be able to sue for people labeling him an aggressor when he is in fact a victim. Or do you really believe they are both victims. Do you really believe Heard should be the Ambassador of domestic violence for the me too movement and Depp should also be the ambassador for domestic violence against men, and bring that to light and to public conversation. If so why does Heard deserve the settlement she received in their divorce. Also, is it acceptable for them to both be portraying those rolls when they are both guilty of the accusations they make? How is acceptable to have such hypocrisy in a sociopolitical movement. It is not acceptable, in fact it completely undercuts the movement and destroys it’s legitimacy. Only Heard took up that Mantle, and only Heard is misrepresenting their mutually toxic relationship. By misrepresenting it, she truly is guilty of defamation.
The only other argument you could have then, is that there must be one victim. There must be one primary aggressor, and the other is only acting in self defense. In that case, then the testimony of their therapist that claims Heard admits to initiating physical confrontation, while she only assumes the same is true of Depp is enough to decide. There is not one shred of evidence that Depp has ever been the initiator, therefore he was acting in self defense, therefore he is the only victim. I don’t believe this; only the devil deals in absolutes (it’s just a saying, I’m not a Christian fundamentalist or anything).
So no matter how you look at it isn’t justifiable to say Depp is wrong. She either abused him, damaged his career, or both.
If this whole saga were about domestic violence, it should be only about how the abuse these two suffered from their parents messed them up, and when near each other they become toxic because of that abuse.
That said, it is truly sad here how unfairly Heard was treated before the me too movement by the media. She should have been able to sue TMZ, etc. for defemation. The two settled all of their problems out of court. It was done. Nobody could have known what actually happened behind closed doors at that point, and nobody should have cared. Heard’s career should have flourished while Depp’s slowly undramatically fizzled. TMZ and others should have stayed out of their business. Heard should have had nothing to do with Me Too or feminism. And Depp should not have been slandered. They are both truly victims of toxic media culture. It’s all a big shit show that never should have happened.
I’ve been reading the testimonies and it’s incredibly shocking the amount of lies that Depp told. If he was not Johnny Depp, there’s no way this would’ve happened. I can’t bear to read the comments because I know what they are already. This is men’s rights and misogyny telling women to step down. Women hate her and are walking with them, it’s sickening.