oh you know what else i’m tired of? the new thing to say online with regards to the trial is that people are dumb for taking sides because it’s a court case and not a football game or whatever. suddenly everyone wants to act like they’re morally above taking a stance and those of us who do take one just care too much about celebrities. you are not better than me because you’re unable to recognize the gravity of this trial and refuse to acknowledge that an abused woman has been dragged through the mud and is continuing to be abused every day by that ugly man and the entire internet. if you have nothing to say then just shut the fuck up about the whole thing. there is no “both sides” to this. like obviously no one is obligated to discuss it but to act like you’re somehow above everyone else while simultaneously not understanding why it’s important is just absurd
this johnny depp vs amber heard trial has shown me that a lot of self-proclaimed feminists who champion britney & monica would fall for the tabloid propaganda against them in a second
what feels especially insidious about this situation is how depp’s team have used the “woke” terminology to mask what’s actually going on.
i just keep going back to johnny’s team hiring a quack doctor who diagnosed amber with serious personality disorders, and called her “histrionic” after talking to her for a day. and argued that because amber was obviously hysteric, she couldn’t have been abused.
that is the most regressive, salem era shit. that is the kind of stuff that happened to britney. women being deemed as crazy, and therefore not victims. but because it’s been cloaked in “women can be abusers too!” it’s woke. (obviously women CAN be abusers. amber isn’t.)
and that’s all it takes. that is literally all it takes to make thousands of feminists wish death upon amber and turn her assault into a joke. y’all are not immune to propaganda.
this johnny depp vs amber heard trial has shown me that a lot of self-proclaimed feminists who champion britney & monica would fall for the tabloid propaganda against them in a second
No but the level of hatred I see for Amber Heard is terrifying. Johnny Depp is a rich white man with a history of preying on minors as an adult. He’s not an underdog, he’s not marginalized in any way, shape, or form. For what reason his fans seem to think he is, I don’t know. You are protecting the person with power. Johnny Depp was known to be homo/biphobic to Amber Heard, an openly bisexual woman. Bi women face a significant rate of intimate partner violence, particularly in relationships with straight men, who weaponize their biphobic misogyny to be abusive. When you protect Johnny Depp you are protecting biphobic violence when you defend Johnny Depp you are protecting homophobically-motivated intimate partner violence. Please get a reality check.
I can’t believe this circus has gotten to the point that I feel the need to say something, but I’m gonna say it: I believe Amber Heard.
I believe the case that proved 12 out of 14 cases of Johnny’s abuse of Amber to the civil standard. I believe the ex-girlfriend who has adamantly denied accusations of Amber abusing her. I believe the makeup artist who covered her bruises. I believe the hotel staff that had to clean up the messes of his violent rampages. I believe Ellen Barkin, a former partner of Johnny, who has also testified about his volatility. I believe Amber’s sister, who witnessed some of the violence. I believe her good friend, who was brought to tears while describing the fear she had for Amber’s wellbeing. And I believe Amber herself, when she says she feared for her life at times in their relationship.
I so wanted to dismiss this case as celebrity drama and move on, but the cesspit of social media has not allowed me to do so. Everywhere I go, I see reaction videos and memes. It’s being consumed like a fandom war—to the point that people genuinely thought it was acceptable to use a description of sexual assault as a tiktok sound. I don’t care if they thought it was a lie; the content was horrifying and triggering and not amusing at all. And it was rape culture at its finest (“Amber honey, that sounds like fun. Why are you complaining?”).
YouTube recommends videos of this case like it’s the next influencer cancel-war, and the comments are full of the most vile, misogynistic sentiments I’ve ever seen. “Hystrionic Personality Disorder” is being treated like a legitimate diagnosis (but only for women, of course), rather than the 21st century version of hysteria—aka a diagnosis specifically designed to discount the authentic distress of women. (Ever read Yellow Wallpaper?)
I do believe that men can be, and are, victims of domestic abuse. They deserve unequivocal support. But beyond the ravings of fangirls, the proof is simply not on Johnny’s side. To be fair, I actually believe Johnny about many things—I believe the multiple times he told witnesses (and was recorded admitting) that he cut his own finger. I believe his texts admitting that he wanted to drown then burn Amber and then rape her corpse. I believe that Amber hurled horrible insults at him and struck him, as abuse victims often do when provoked by their abusers. I believe the many, many vile things he’s said about/called women.
And yeah, it’s a real disappointment. I understand the nostalgia surrounding Johnny Depp. In many ways, he defined the media of my generation. But when I say I don’t give a shit, I really mean it. I believe he abused his wife. And I stand with Amber.
I have been writing this post for a few days because I cannot stop thinking about the particular way that Depp v. Heard has been playing out in fandom not just over the course of this trial in Virginia but over the course of the past few years. One of my friends commented recently about the way in which fandom can train people to see things which are not there by taking fragments of media out of context and scrutinising them for small ‘tells’ which hint to the ‘real’ story often in support of a shipping narrative similar to the way that fragments of this trial are decontextualised and recontextualised, pored over in minute detail, and tea leaves read to support the idea that Amber Heard is lying, that Amber Heard is an abuser.
Much of what is circulating on social media about this case are outright lies at worst — the idea that Amber Heard quoted The Talented Mr. Ripley on the stand, which Snopes had to debunk — and pernicious victim-blaming nonsense and abuse myths at best.Milani Cosmetics’ decision to wade into the trial by suggesting Heard claimed she had used their specific concealer before it was released (she didn’t, the palette was used as an example of colour correcting concealer palettes) and insinuate that she must therefore be lying about having been abused falls into the latter category. The idea that if someone misremembers what brand of concealer they used over half a decade ago they are lying about being abused is appalling, it’s laughable. And it’s everywhere. This should be disturbing to anyone watching this case who truly cares about victim advocacy regardless of where you fall on the question of who abused who because the mainstreaming of abuse myths hurts all victims. There is no such thing as using an abuse myth to defend a victim or expose an abuser; if Heard is an abuser the logic underpinning that conclusion cannot be abuser logic without causing incredible social harm to victim advocacy.
And I have seen in fandom the way that people engage in wilful misreadings of all sorts of things to support an idea which is contrary to all reality. The prime example of this for me is Loki. Last summer I became unhealthily obsessed with the way that Loki fans who were opposed to his relationship with Sylvie concocted all sorts of wilful misreadings not just of the show itself but of interviews from the cast, writers, director, and even the composer — which would then go viral, racking up thousands and in some cases tens of thousands of likes.
There was a post on here and on twitter which took out-of-context quotes from several people involved with the show to frame them as contradictory and made some joke about people in a group project not agreeing on what it was about. This post got tens of thousands of likes and shares but if you read the quotes in their full context it was plain that all of the people speaking were in fact in total agreement on what the show was about. There was a cohesive behind-the-scenes agenda but it didn’t matter. Natalie Holt, the composer, mentioned in several subsequent interviews that her words had been taken out of context and twisted to imply something she emphatically was not saying. Other quotes were taken out of context and had bad faith readings applied to try to frame Kate Herron and Sophia Di Martino, both bisexual women who have expressed support and allyship with the trans community, as transphobic in order to justify online abuse and harassment of them. The same people doing this were simultaneously perpetuating harmful transmisogynistic rhetoric about ‘autogynephilia’ in order to frame the relationship as problematic and twisting Julia Serano’s academic work on the topic to support this even after she had expressly disagreed with this and called it out.
The primary driver of all of this is of course misogyny but if anyone pointed that out the deflection was to gesture towards Sophia Di Martino/Sylvie and Kate Herron being white women, particularly in contexts where the people doing this were challenged on why they didn’t hold Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson to the same standard. The exact same deflection is used to dispel any notion that misogyny might be a factor in the virulence of people’s anti-Heard sentiment: that defending her is “white feminism” and that she is exploiting “white woman’s tears”. This really illustrates the way that people in fandom have — in the words of one of my friends who I was speaking to about this the other day — learned a particular vocabulary but not an analytical toolkit.
“White feminism” and associated terms like “white woman’s tears” were coined to describe the unique tools which white women have at their disposal to (a) oppress racialised people and especially Black people, and (b) recruit others — particularly white men — to do the same. These terms do not apply to dynamics between white women and white men because white women cannot be racist towards white men. Depending on whether the white men in question belong to other marginalised classes white women can be ableist, transphobic, homophobic, or enact other forms of oppression against them but they cannot specifically be racist, so gesturing to their race in order to deflect from questions about double standards applied to a white woman versus a white man is a total non-starter and yet it happens all the time in these discussions. In fact the reason it happens is because (Depp’s struggles with addiction notwithstanding) the white men in question don’t have any other known marginalisations along which the white women might be oppressing them. So we have to make something up.
What’s really disturbing in the case of Depp v. Heard is that gesturing to “white woman’s tears” implies that white women are in fact the oppressors of white men and that they are more likeable and sympathetic figures to the general public. This posits either that misogyny is not real or that it does not apply to white women and is not a factor in the way that the general public assesses alleged abuse, which is not just untrue but actually dangerous. At a certain point the truth of what happened between Depp and Heard becomes immaterial when people are talking about the way the pro-Depp side is presenting and mainstreaming arguments which are extraordinarily harmful to victims of abuse. In fact, the victim-blaming rhetoric which is being pushed under the guise of “advocacy for male victims” is an uncanny echo of the transphobic rhetoric which was perpetuated in Loki fandom under the guise of “calling out transphobia”. What is happening here is that people are removing terms from their original political context where they were used to criticise oppressive power structures in order to support and uphold the paradigms they were coined to critique.
The disconnection of these terms and ideas from the power analysis they’re a product of also means that even when people are able to recognise that particular arguments are harmful they’re not able to see them in their full context as Depp and his team wielding systemic power and privilege to oppress and marginalise not just Heard but anyone identified as sharing a class with her. There are all sorts of posts and threads about the fact that it’s important not to allow Heard’s ‘diagnosis’ of borderline personality disorder to add to stigma that people diagnosed with BPD face with no recognition of the fact that this stigma is the exact reason Depp’s team wanted her characterised as having BPD at all. The argument from them is that she is a bad person and she is an abuser because she allegedly has BPD: they are stigmatising people diagnosed with this disorder in order to character assassinate her. Yet none of the people writing these threads about the importance of not letting this colour your perception of people with BPD have stopped to question why his team even considers whether she has it or not of any relevance and how this relates to the way he could be trying to exercise power and privilege in order to silence her. It’s insane to me that I even have to point this out.
What is absolutely fucked about all of this to me too is the proliferation of “amber heard supporters dni” in people’s bios. A lot of ink has been spilled in fandom on the overwhelmingly performative, virtue-signalling nature of a lot of dni criteria and this is what sticks in my throat when I think about this. People who put this in their bios are largely following the crowd and have done no actual research into the case beyond whatever distortions of the truth that have been leaked by his legal team cross their dashboards and timelines, if that. There is no curiosity about her allegations or her evidence or any desire to understand why people might support her when seemingly the entire internet has decided she is a monster, and what it comes down to is that people are virtue signalling by showing that as a matter of principle they do not stand by a woman who has made allegations of serious physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. What is considered virtuous in fandom is close-minded reactionary hatred of a woman who accused a powerful man of domestic violence. It is considered virtuous not to investigate her allegations. It is considered virtuous to declare that you hate her because everyone else does.
This hatred is so completely outsized in response to her perceived crime it absolutely dwarfs any outpouring of vitriol around someone like Harvey Weinstein because it’s not actually coming from any moral outrage about abuse itself. What is fuelling this outrage against Amber Heard is misogyny and victim-blaming, and that’s the fatal irony of all of this. Even though people are mired in cognitive dissonance about “who abused who” many of them show that underneath it all, even if they can’t admit it to themselves, they really do know she is a victim and that he is an abuser or else they would not apply victim-blaming tropes to her nor abuse apologist talking points to him. It’s the fact that we all know, really, instinctively, who is abuser and who is victim, that Depp supporters have to protect themselves so fiercely from this uncomfortable truth by making not just Heard herself but anyone who speaks in her defence or to the facts of the case personae non grata and acceptable targets for harassment and bullying themselves. It’s because we all know, really, in our hearts, that the power differential favours him that it’s necessary for him and his supporters to indulge in pernicious victim-blaming abuse myths to paint her as the villain. It’s because we know this that his supporters have to accuse everyone who questions his obvious DARVO tactics of “not thinking men can be abused”.
Actually, men can be and are abused, including in some cases by women, but abuse is about power and control. This is why the majority of male victims of abuse are marginalised in some way or otherwise vulnerable (young actors getting started in their careers, for example). It is also unbelievable historical revisionism to pretend that #MeToo has only ever been about female victims of abuse. It’s important for a number of reasons to recognise that abuse is a function of power and control and a tool for enforcing power and control but in particular it’s necessary to acknowledge this because otherwise the only explanation left for why there is such a gender disparity statistically between who perpetrates abuse and who is a victim of abuse is the TERF explanation that men are innately more violent, which is not true.
But to believe that Depp is Heard’s victim despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary is to completely eschew this power analysis of their relationship. It is to believe that there is power parity between a twenty-two year-old just getting started in her career and an A-list global celebrity with multi-million dollar mansions all over the world and his own private island. It is to ignore the reality that throughout their relationship she was surrounded by his staff and his security, that even the nurses who saw her after his beatings were on his payroll. To believe that he is her victim even after it was ruled in the UK to a civil standard that he abused her is to posit the MRA belief that women are always immediately believed when they allege abuse and that this imbues them with massive social power to ruin men’s lives “for no reason”. The fact that people seriously argue that the UK legal system favours women is absolutely astonishing. But not only is it not true that women are not believed in general, it is also not true that Amber Heard was believed! The rewriting of history around this is fucking breathtaking. She was getting called a lying gold-digger from the start. The only person who has ever been hurt by these allegations is her.
But at this point the need for it to be true that Depp is Heard’s victim is compounded not just by a desire to keep loving Johnny Depp but also by years of participation in a movement against Heard which, if she is a victim, is morally indefensible. These are people who cannot accept the guilt and shame of having participated in a harassment campaign which is fundamentally victim-blaming and misogynistic in nature and targeted not just against her but other victims speaking out in her defence. They cannot accept this truth so they choose to look away. The furthest you will get one of these people if they do listen to facts about the case is “well they’re both bad”, which itself is a victim-blaming cop out and dangerous rhetoric which prevents victims from recognising that they are being abused and seeking or receiving help.
The other day, I saw some old tweets between Depp supporters talking about how disturbed they were by the behaviour of other Depp supporters in the wake of his replacement by Mads Mikkelson in Fantastic Beasts 3. This was fascinating to me because in this conversation these two people confidently proclaimed that Depp himself, being a kind and gentle soul, would never condone the harassment of Mikkelson or Mikkelson’s fans. But this is ridiculous and totally disconnected from reality since it’s a documented fact that Johnny Depp’s legal team has been purchasing bots in order to provoke harassment of people speaking out in defence of Amber Heard — many of whom are abuse victims themselves — and it would not remotely surprise me if they had also directed this abuse at Mikkelson and his fans.
You can see this bot activity for yourself in any one of the hashtags his supporters are pushing. This “sweet and gentle man” is haunted by his misogynistic rants in texts to friends in which he describes lurid fantasies about burning Amber and desecrating her corpse, the texts in which he called the mother of his children a ‘cunt’, the property damage he committed in the past. The cognitive dissonance it requires to describe this man as ‘gentle’ irrespective of whether you believe he is a victim must be immense. But it’s also required in order to keep believing that Johnny Depp is who people want him to be, and part of shoring up his image as a gentle man means demonising a woman who was twenty-two and just starting out in her career as an actress when she met him and trying to convince yourself she somehow had the balance of power in their relationship.
If you look at any of the hashtags his supporters are pushing you will also see something even more disturbing, which is the way that supporters of Johnny Depp are also extending the abuse apologist logic and absurd conspiracy theories they spin in defence of him to other abusers. It’s worth pointing out that Marilyn Manson, a close friend of Johnny Depp’s, is now suing Evan Rachel Wood for defamation and many of Depp’s supporters are raking her over the coals in the exact same way as Amber Heard and I’m left wondering what is the limit of what people will believe? In five years will I see “evan rachel wood supporters dni” in people’s profiles?
What is amazing to me too is that there are people discussing the ‘fandomisation’ of this trial — the fancams, the memes, etc. — who are speaking about how disrespectful it all is toJohnny Depp as if it’s not precisely the response he and his legal team want. The more people make fancams of him being ‘savage’ on the stand (an odd choice of words given the furore over his racist Dior Sauvage ad campaign, not to mention the fact that he is the subject of horrific abuse allegations) and TikTok videos drawing attention to the disparity in crowd size between his and Heard’s fans the more people are encouraged to respond to this case emotionally rather than logically. People are manipulated into thinking supporting Depp is the popular stance and shown that they will be socially ostracised if they criticise him; people are encouraged to lean into nostalgia around his movies and remember how good he used to make them feel (and feel anger at Heard for “taking Jack Sparrow away”, never mind the fact that Depp had already left the franchise before Heard’s Washington Post op-ed was published); people are guided down a path well-worn with misogynistic tropes about lying, gold-digging, perfidious women out to ruin good men’s lives.
The repeated assertion that “she shit in his bed” (proven false, but nobody cares) and associated scatological puns on her name are intended to associate her with disgust. The posting over and over of his severed finger without censorship or content warnings is intended to shock and upset people in order to make the associated accusation that “she cut off his finger” (also proven false but again, nobody cares) stick in people’s minds. These things are fed by his team to the media in order to discredit and undermine her so that nobody is listening when she describes the horrific abuse she suffered at his hands during the fight in which he lost his finger or if they are they don’t believe her. The fancams of Johnny Depp “being savage” and the videos making fun of her sobbing so hard she can’t breathe and reenacting her allegations to mock her for them are two sides of the same coin both of which benefit him and his narrative. He is being lionised and she is being demonised, exactly as he wants. And it is exactly as he wants. This is a man who texted one of his friends that he would give her “total global humiliation”. The man stated in black and white exactly what he wanted so I’m not sure why anyone would think he would be appalled by any of this.
On a final note, I wonder how many people have actually read the op-ed that she is currently being sued over? I think people should and bear in mind that this is the speech Depp and his team is trying to silence. It barely even alludes to him and the bulk of it is about the need to expand protection for victims of abuse in general. Remember that.
Crazy how many of y'all fell for the PR case of the century… It being televised, weird ass tik toks, youtube pushing compilations of this man mumbling nonsense, while jobless bitches chuckle and swoon in the background, because they watched a few pirate movies years ago. Of all people to have as an example of “a man can be abused too”, for some bird brained reason you lot chose that nasty fucking man and stuck by him, and for what? Another notch to put in your virtue signalling belt. Outstanding how moral obelisks of tumblr have chosen the worst possible case to not even give a chance to what this woman was saying/sharing. This is an instance that will surely bite yall in the ass in the upcoming years, when you find yourselves complicit. Maybe you’ll touch some grass and give your brain a chance to mature a bit, this is referring to the teens that went on a witch hunt, for you middle aged bitches, you are going to hell and he isn’t gonna fuck you <3.
Johnny Depp is a cunt, you weirdos need a lobotomy, being chronically online has rotted your brains.
just saw a story posted on insta about a disabled woman who sued depp years ago because he had ordered his security guards to basically abuse and violate her at a show and he watched the whole thing…i wanna throw up
johnny depp was in his mid twenties (25*) when he started dating a 17 year old winona ryder.
he was in his mid forties when he started dating a 26* year old amber heard.
he was 54 when he started dating a 22 year old dancer (2018).
he allowed his 15 year old daughter to live with a man in his twenties and proceeded to defend said man when the police got involved on statutory rape charges.
he is a violent man (not just towards amber) in general. he is literally back in court next month for punching a man on set. and has a long, long history (that predates amber) of smashing things and physically assaulting others.
he uses demeaning, misogynistic language towards women in general, not just amber.
edit: he called the *mother of his children* a “French extortionist cunt”
he is transphobic. towards one of amber’s former best friends, a man who was meant to be his own friend too.
he is an abuse apologist. he defended roman polanski for RAPING A CHILD saying he was too old for that and was married so obviously it’s not possible.
he’s besties with marilyn manson who is an abusive piece of shit himself.
even if you don’t believe that amber was abused by him, is this the man you want to fight to the end defending?
I really never want to hear a single god damn thing about zoomers being the Most Progressive, Empathetic generation again when they turned a woman who was forced to testify for the cameras and publicly cried over being assaulted by her dysfunctional addict ex husband into a meme on TikTok and then go apeshit at those of us who aren’t gullible misogynists and believe her mountains of evidence
I have a Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka doll I got when I had a short hyperfixation on him (WW not JD) and I’m going to get rid of it but idk if I should burn it or sell it. On the one hand, I need the money, but on the other hand I don’t want to give it to a Depp supporter.
Maybe I’ll just wait and see if I come up with a better idea.
I’m seeing a lot of people either misunderstanding the verdict or misrepresenting it as “the jury beleived she was abused but decided she shouldn’t/couldn’t talk about it” when that simply isn’t the case. Because of this, I’ve put this together to summarize what the verdict actually was and what it meant:
On Johnny Depp’s Claims:
Claim 1- “I spoke up against sexual violence-and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.” - Verdict:DEFAMATION
Claim 2- “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Claim 3- “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Awarded Damages
Summative (Damages for harm rendered by statements) - $10 Million Dollars
Punative (punishment or “we just don’t like you Amber” damages) - $350,000 Dollars (the cap for Virginia, they attempted 5 million dollars)
On Amber Heard’s Claims:
Claim 1 - “Amber Heard and her friends in the media used fake sexual violence allegations as aboth a sword and a sheild, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her sexual violence hoax ‘facts’ as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr.Depp.” - Verdict: NOT DEFAMATION
Claim 2 - “Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn’t do the trick. The officers came to the penthouse, throughly searched and interveiwed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So Amber and her friends spilt a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories stright under the direction of a lawyer and publicist, and then placed a second call to 911.” - Verdict: DEFAMATION
Claim 3 - “[W]e have reached the begining of the end of Ms. Heard’s abuse hoax against Johnny Depp.”Verdict:NOT DEFAMATION
Awarded Damages:
Summative (Damages for harm rendered by statements) - $2 Million Dollars
Punative (punishment or “we just don’t like you Johnny” damages) - $0
Summary of what this means:
What this means is that the jury not only did not beleive that Amber Heard was abused, but beleived that she did start a malicious abuse hoax camapaign against him. We can see that because they ruled all of Johnny’s Claims as defamation and and the first and thrid claim, which talk generally about Amber Heard starting an abuse hoax, as NOT defamation.
However, it seems they either didn’t beleive, or didn’t beleive that it was proved by better weight of the evidence that Amber and her friends roughed up the apartment specifically. So what they didn’t beleive was the more specific claim, not the general ideas.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN THEY RULED SHE WAS ABUSED BUT SHE’S JUST NOT ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT IT. THIS MEANS THEY RULED SHE WASN’T ABUSED AND WAS LYING ABOUT IT MALICIOUSLY IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEFAME JOHNNY DEPP.
I have seen so many posts where people are making points about why they think Depp is right and Heard is wrong, and their replies are full of Amber Heard supporters saying just vile things such as “k**l yourself” “I hope you get r*****” and “when your partner abuses you you’ll get the sympathy you receive :)” and other just digusting things like that.
This is coming from a place of support for either side, but concern for the people posting these comments mental health. If you have ever written a comment like/a tempted to do so this I want to suggest you:
1. Take a breath
2. Take a break from social media and the internet for a little bit, atleast a few hours
3. Talk to somone.
Because this level of vitriolic anger over a celebrity court case that doesn’t involve nor effect you is just plain unhealthy.
Amber Heard had more evidence supporting her claims than most abuse victims have and yet that jury decided she defamed that man. I’m truly angry and disgusted. This has been a major setback for women and abuse victims.
Crazy how many of y'all fell for the PR case of the century… It being televised, weird ass tik toks, youtube pushing compilations of this man mumbling nonsense, while jobless bitches chuckle and swoon in the background, because they watched a few pirate movies years ago. Of all people to have as an example of “a man can be abused too”, for some bird brained reason you lot chose that nasty fucking man and stuck by him, and for what? Another notch to put in your virtue signalling belt. Outstanding how moral obelisks of tumblr have chosen the worst possible case to not even give a chance to what this woman was saying/sharing. This is an instance that will surely bite yall in the ass in the upcoming years, when you find yourselves complicit. Maybe you’ll touch some grass and give your brain a chance to mature a bit, this is referring to the teens that went on a witch hunt, for you middle aged bitches, you are going to hell and he isn’t gonna fuck you <3.
Johnny Depp is a cunt, you weirdos need a lobotomy, being chronically online has rotted your brains.
As a verdict is possibly hours away, a sense of dread has been building in my stomach for what it will mean for Amber’s future, as well as all victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), particularly as women’s basic rights continue to be under attack in the United States. Like many people who are following the case, I have personal experiences with abuse. Much of my research focuses on IPV, specifically, the disparities in resources and services that are available for survivors to leave their abusers, such as economic, social, geographical barriers. It’s a topic which is deeply tied to my own personal experiences and academic career.
I initially was ambivalent to Amber Heard. Before I began to research the case, I was firmly in the “they both suck” camp, having only briefly glanced through articles. I started to pay more attention to the media coverage over the past six weeks and was really staggered by how Heard was being portrayed as a lying, crazy, gold-digging woman through narratives that were not only going unchallenged, but were heavily perpetuated in the public discourse. Even worse, that the abuse she experienced had been capitalized on by “true crime” junkies and mocked in TikTok videos and Youtube compilations. So I began watching the trial live and found that there was far more evidence and far more substantial evidence which shows that JD was the perpetrator of abuse within their relationship.
Is she guilty of fighting back? Absolutely. Shenever liedabout doing so, even dating back to her 2016 deposition. However, fighting back against a man who has beaten you, sexually assaulted you, controlled your career, finances, and who you can associate with does not equate to being an abuser. It’s simply surviving. And yes, I’ve heard those audio tapes, the in which she’s expresses her incredulity at him for stating their fights were fair when she feared he would kill her.
His case has relied upon deeply misogynistic narratives to discredit both her claims and her character. She was after his money all along, even though she refused the 30 million dollar fortune she was legally entitled to, as there was no prenup. She painted on bruises, even though a makeup artist testified to covering up her swollen lip and two black eyes. She cut off his finger, even though multiple texts and even an audio recording showcase him admitting to doing it in the midst of a bender. She didn’t donate her money, even though she and the organization created a 10 year plan for her to make yearly payments (in my personal opinion, what she does with her money either way is nobody’s fucking business). Also worth noting, an ACLU representative testified to her being ahead of schedule until Depp began suing her. She made up a hoax, because she documented her abuse - as we advise all people who are in abusive situations to do. She’s a liar, because women are inherently deceitful liars.
I don’t know whether Amber Heard will win her case. We’re witnessing a radical right-wing political swing to control and criminalize women’s bodies with Roe v. Wade under attack right now. To be blunt, I have very little faith in the justice system and that a jury - in Virginia of all places - will rule in favour of an abused woman over her charismatic, powerful ex-husband. However, I think it’s important to remember that Amber did everything right, that is, everything we tell women to do. She documented her abuse, left her abusive partner, and was granted a restraining order - and she’s continuing to be punished for doing so. If Amber, a privileged white woman with access to economic resources, is still struggling to escape her abuser, how can we expect women without those privileges to?
You know, perpetuating misogynistic narratives about Amber Heard being a lying gold-digger, manufacturing an elaborate hoax doesn’t only discredit her, it discredits women everywhere. It is an age old narrative that has been used to discredit women for centuries. It will be used to discredit you if you ever come forward about abuse/sexual assault, whether that be while talking to others about your experience, reporting it to the police, or taking it to court. And if not you, it will be your mothers, sisters, nieces, or daughters.
amber heard is a manipulative cunt for looking sad and crying in court, but johnny depp is a legend for being contemptuous, laughing, making faces and refusing to answer questions directly
we must all have sympathy for the times depp beat her up in a drug or alcohol fuelled haze because he may not remember doing it, but amber heard is an unreliable snake because she has bpd and female hysteria (diagnosed by a “psychologist” who only spoke to her for 12 hours). unlike him, she deserves no sympathy for her alleged mental illness
johnny depp can call amber heard a cum-guzzler, 50 cent stripper, fantsize about burning and raping her corpse and its okay because he was just frustrated with her. but amber is soulless for recording him being abusive or admitting to hitting her
no one cares that milani lied about when their palette came out despite no official claim that their palette was the product amber used to cover her bruises
no, amber is the abuser and devil incarnate and lying gold-digging whore. youtube, instagram, tiktok all unanimously agree. why did she stay? why did she fight back? why did she collect evidence?
this has set women back decades. this kind of victim-blaming rhetoric is a backlash of the metoo movement. i know the world hates women and victims. but the reminder is so painful. the way the world has turned to belittling amber despite the evidence breaks my heart. no female victim was ever given this much support and no male abuser has ever gotten this much vitriol. facts dont matter anymore because this abusive misogynist played a pirate you freaks liked as children. we are quite literally living in hell.
Post this because of the doctor that was part of Depp’s team and diagnosed Heard:
I have got to say, it’s nice not to be bombarded with pro Depp Youtube videos and pro Depp trends on Twitter. It also makes it very obvious that he was buying that support because the absence of his bots is very loud. I’m seeing way more support for Amber now than ever before (including when the allegations against him became public).
His stans are very agitated because they actually bought into the artificial hype. Now it’s just them harassing Amber and her supporters and they look stupid without the thousands of bots Depp used during the trial.
