And that’s why Depp has already won, and he won a long time ago, before the trial ever started and before he even did what he did to Amber Heard. Because she was never going to be the victim we wanted with the evidence that we want because that person doesn’t exist and never has, and there’s nothing Heard could ever have done to be that person and we hate her for that. Why can’t she just supply some basic evidence? Where are the photos of her genitals after being raped with a liquor bottle? Where are the pictures with the bruises we think she ought to have had, to be circulated around the internet for all of time like we do with the ones of Rihanna? Why didn’t she get the most brutal attacks on video or audio by anticipating them beforehand, or documenting them in the immediate aftermath of being raped or abused? We want her to be the crime scene and the cop and we just can’t believe how bad she’s being at both. I mean how damn hard can it be? If she just ticked off those basic boxes we would believe her for sure, we really really would.
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.
The list on who’s on the final jury in the Depp v. Heard civil trial that is currently ongoing in Fairfax, Virginia.
(demonstrations from CourtTv & Rob from @Law & Lumber, one to show the full jury & the other to show the dimssed alternates)
The two alternates were Juror #2/B & Juror #8/H. Juror #2 is a Asian male, who is in the mid 20s. Juror #8 is a older White woman, who’s in her fifties. They were both assumed by lawyers and reporters, Ian (@.RunkleOfTheBailey), Larry @.DUI Guy), Rob (@.Law&Lumber), and James, (@JamesFromCourt) to be Pro-Johnny.
The remaining jury are these 7 individuals in total below.
1. Juror #1/A, a Asian male, assumed to be in his mid 20s to early 30s.
2. Juror #3/C, a Asian male, assumed to be in his mid 30s.
3. Juror #4/D, a Black woman, assumed to be in her mid 40s to early 50s.
4. Juror #5/E, a Asian woman, assumed to be in her early 30s.
5. Juror #6/F, a White man, assumed to be in his mid 60s.
6. Juror #7/G, a White man, assumed to be in his late 20s to early 30s.
7. Juror #9/I, a Asian man, assumed to be in his 40s. Interesting enough, this juror is assumed to be very Anti-Amber, to point of out right give her a scrawl when she was on the stand.
5 men, 2 women.
All of these 7 jurors must come to an unanimous decision to reach a verdict in this case.
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.
there are people bringing their pet alpacas in pirate cosplay to pose outside the courthouse with that man’s lawyer every day meanwhile amber can’t get to the car without the crowd screaming misogynistic slurs at her but yeah no tell me about how this experience is equally horrible and traumatic for both parties
all of her witnesses including her friend’s ex husband who happens to be a male victim of dv had to private their social accounts because they immediately started receiving threats. her psychologist (who also testified against keith raniere and r kelly) had her reviews flooded with negativity after she took the stand. all of her friends who were witnesses admitted they’ve grown apart over the years and i have to believe at least some of it is from the continued harassment they’ve received from that man’s supporters as they’ve continued to testify multiple times for amber. you call this equal fucking ground…..she is so fucking alone. even most of the people who dare to speak up against the way the trial is being covered are criticizing exactly that — the media. everyone is willing to mock her by name but the second someone tells them it’s harmful they’re apologizing to some vague third part. my heart is broken for her in so many ways.
meanwhile that man’s lawyer is being hugged by fans like she just saved an innocent man from the electric chair and getting tiktok velocity edits made for her and people are asking her earnestly if they’re dating. but yeah no no no it’s all very equal and balanced and it’s definitely all amber’s fault if victims are scared to come forward after this!
if a woman shows emotion, she’s being manipulative. if she doesn’t, she’s a psychopath. if a woman gives detailed testimony, she’s lying. if she doesn’t, she’s not reliable. women just cannot win in the court of public opinion. no one ever wants to believe women and they will try to justify that any way they can.
I fucking hate what’s happening regarding Amber Heard. The verdict was given live on French television as well and hearing such unanimous voices against her makes me sick. I guess writing about your experiences as a victim of domestic violence and psychological abuse while not naming the one who did this to you is too much now. What a terrible message this is for victims everywhere. Also this man commenting the images is talking about how this isn’t a blow against the MeToo movement because “feminists have dissociated themselves from her long ago”, like dude shut the fuck up if you’re going to misrepresent our voices like that.
how a jury looked at this mountain of evidence and said amber heard was not abused one single time by depp is actually insane.
this case sets a precedent. that a abused woman can not and should not speak out about abuse without expecting to be absolutely destroyed in the process.
it goes so far beyond these two celebrities. it goes so far beyond “oh she said she hit him” but “he also said he hit her”
it goes into what can legally said by those who have been abused and that they can’t speak about it publicly (while not even mentioning their abusers name) without being drained of everything they have.
i’m heartbroken today for all abuse survivors still suffering in silence. feeling fear of coming forward lest they be accused of abuse themselves or defamation. truly heartbreaking.
I’m so confused about this verdict … when D*pp’s lawyer said that Amber’s abuse allegations were a hoax, the jury determined she was defamed by that statement which means they weren’t a hoax so how did D*pp win since clearly he abused her as determined by the jury so her op-ed was true and factual.
Not to mention that she didn’t even name him in her op-ed so why does he get to even have a defamation trial in the first place?
The legal system is so rigged against domestic violence victims it’s not even funny.
“One of the reasons I have gotten so obsessed with this case is the sheer unreality of watching large swathes of the internet and progressive media act as if this narrative — Powerful Man With Anger Management And Drug Problems Beats Wife — is some implausible fairy tale rather than a story we have seen a million times. Even if Heard didn’t have an Everest of supporting evidence, even if this was a he-said-she-said case, her account should be treated as plausible on its face.”
Men can publicly voice out their support to child rapists and have matching tattoos with them , and they can abuse their wives and workmates and they can groom 17 year olds and lock them away from their families, they can joke about rape and talk about women in the most dehumanising way possible, they can be caught lying numerous times without getting a backlash because everyone can laugh it off , because that’s what men do and that’s okay , they can go out in public with dirty greasy and a face that hasn’t touched water in weeks without getting humiliated by newspapers and media outlets, they can say the most outrageous things without getting crucified because they’re humans and humans make mistakes and that’s okay .
But women on the other hand are not humans, they’re a fantasy, an image that must be maintained and monitored by everyone around them , therefore they shouldn’t try and break this image by saying the wrong words , or even the right words at the wrong time, in order for them to prove their humanity they have to go through the most inhumane routines, and act in the most robotic of ways, because their tears are for manipulation and their laughs are for taunting , they must not tell the truth but they also will crucified if they didn’t, they’re liars by nature and should work hard enough to be taken seriously even in situations where their lives are on the line, one woman could break this image and the rest would have to carry the curse of Eve , and suffer for an eternity in order to be forgiven again, but men can always say they’re not like Adam.
These are the amazing woman who stood up with Amber Heard when no one else did.
They liked Amber Heard’s Instagram statement
- Kate Nash
- Selma Blair
- Sarah Steele
- Melanie Lynskey
- Lena Headey
Celebrities have influence and influence is power. This list is not even slightly comparable with all the popular celebrities who support and like JD’s statement but the fact that these women are all feminists and human rights activists says a lot and means a lot too.
This post will be updated.
(If you can, leave them a comment of support in their latest posts. JD stans are attacking them. But please IGNORE THE COMMENTS FROM JD STANS, IT’S NOT WORTH IT)
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.
