now apparently people are wanting brad pitt to pursue legal action against his ex wife angelina jolie too bc she spoke out about him supposedly being violent towards one of the kids on a flight or something.
now I don’t know a lot about that, I don’t think a lot of it has been brought out into the public, but even if you fully believe depp is innocent and heard is a liar, what the fuck does that have to do with the pitt/jolie case? literally neither of them have anything to do with this?
it goes to show to too many, this wasn’t about abuse or the truth. I doubt many of these people even actually know or care whether pitt actually did anything or not. this was about punishing women for speaking out.
So… I hate that I’m about to talk about this but I’m about to talk about this:
The Defamation Case wasn’t about whether either of them was abused, it was about the truthfulness of Heard’s specific claims in a magazine article and the financial impact of any lies in said article.
And she did lie in that article.
All through the rest of the trial she aired actual abuse, expressed that he -was- abusive, and he expressed that their whole -relationship- was abusive. And included specific examples that could be proven or disproven which defamed Amber in turn.
So she countersued him on those slanderous terms.
And they both won.
Amber told a whole bunch of stories about Depp that could be disproven. Does that mean all of his abuse didn’t happen? No. But there was stuff she made up in order to make him look worse (Like peeing in the mop bucket) that she had to pay damages over when it was shown to be a lie.
Depp told less false stories and they weren’t as damaging so he paid less. BUT HE, TOO, LIED.
So they both lied. And they both paid.
Was Heard abused? Fucking clearly. Was Depp abused? Fucking clearly in a significantly different manner and degree. Was their relationship fucked up to begin with? The texts showed they were both kinksters with neither boundaries set nor clear lines of consent, so fucking yes.
But the -trial- wasn’t about whether the relationship was abusive, and the fact that it was doesn’t negate that both parties lied publicly about abuse that never occurred within the relationship.
If you want to get pissed at someone in this situation about harming abuse victims, get pissed at Heard for lying about a bunch of abuse that didn’t happen when she could have just come forward about abuse that -did- happen. She had texts and pictures and shit that she could have provided instead of making up stories that could be disproven in court to play more dramatically in tabloids.
If she had not lied publicly about it, and instead told the truth, there wouldn’t be additional fertilizer for the “Maybe the Abuse Victim Lied” bullshit narrative that goes on in our society. She gave abusers a high profile and public example of victims lying about abuse, and no amount of proof that other abuse did occur can undermine that, now.
I agree with everything you said here and thank you for this addition, it definitely gave me a bit of insight I didn’t have before. But again, her lying has nothing to do with any other victim.
Do I agree that her as a victim making stuff up is harmful? Yeah absolutely. But people using her to come at other women who have claimed things against other men and say they’re exactly the same with no evidence of that other than they too are also women and the supposed perpetuators are men is just misogyny.
And she has done a lot of damage if what you say is true, and I think the handling of this has been awful in general. It never should have been aired like it has. But there were always going to be people claiming she’s a liar solely because she’s a woman. Even if everything she had said had been the absolute truth, people would still claim she lied because she’s a woman and he is a powerful man.
Things are going to be even worse for victims because of all of this and I do hold her accountable for some of that. But the way people are coming at every other celebrity woman who has claimed something against man is down to their own misogyny as well. One woman being a liar doesn’t mean all are and them not understanding that is misogyny.
last thing on this Depp situation, I promise: the LGBTQ+ people defending him so hard are embarrassing because he has repeatedly shown his dislike of us with his biphobia towards amber and his misgendering of her trans friend including on the stand.
whether you think he’s innocent in this or not, he’s still a vile bigoted man. and while no one deserves false abuse accusations, making him out to be some pure innocent baby who has never done anything wrong is extremely questionable.
In addition to being biphobic/transphobic he’s also racist.
Johnny Depp started dating Winona Ryder when she was 17 and he was fucking 25 and he is literally known for dating women 20+ years younger than him, which is predatory as fuck.
A reminder that Rosario Dawson is a transphobe who abused and violently assaulted a trans man, so I’d really appreciate it if you tagged your gifsets lovingly focused on her with something in addition to/other than just the name of one of my favorite characters so I can get her off my dash without having to banish Ashoka from my fandom life forever.
