When I was a teenager, I was raped by someone who had stalked me for over a year. After the assault, I really, really did not want to engage either the police or other official channels; I just didn’t want him near me. Since it didn’t seem like I could do anything to keep him away from me, I told friends what he had done to me, both in hopes he wouldn’t repeat it, and so they could help support me. Eventually, it got back to me that he’d felt abused by me. I was surprised. I heard he thought it was abusive to tell others about his behavior, ruining his reputation; yet others said he probably was so overwhelmed by his love for me, he had to treat me how he did — it was my fault for not reciprocating.
Confiding publicly that my abuser felt abused by me may make you not want to believe me. It makes me, like most others, an imperfect victim. But let me tell you up front that those rumored complaints — ruining his reputation, blaming his suffering on my not reciprocating — are actually part of a documented pattern of behavior from those who engage in abuse: DARVO, or deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender. Does that make me more believable? Or what if I tell you I’m not actually asking you to decide whether or not this person was left perfectly unharmed by me? What if I just didn’t want to be stalked anymore? What’s that worth to you?
This anecdote pre-dated 2017, the year the modern #MeToo movement started. So, too, do the events at the core of the national furor around the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp defamation case, happening in Fairfax County, Virginia, likely due at least in part to the state’s specific libel laws. Normally a case that involves domestic violence wouldn’t be so public, but because it’s a civil suit, the presiding judge permitted it to be broadcasted – and broadcasted it’s been. Despite what seemed like progress in the #MeToo era, the way this trial has been picked apart online, the ridicule and vitriol Heard has been subjected to, and the utter disdain for a woman who claims a powerful man abused her, all seem proof that we never progressed past the idea of good vs. bad, of perfect victim vs. evil abuser. As we continue to reinforce that narrative, that there’s no room for nuance for assault victims, it’s the abusers who have everything to gain.
Heard filed for divorce from Depp in 2016, and claimed Depp abused her, including an incident in which he allegedly threw a phone at her and bruised her face (Depp denied this allegation). Witnesses called to the stand in this trial, which comes just two years after the libel suit Depp lost in the UK, testified that they had seen bruises on Heard’s face, and Heard’s sister testified that she saw Depp abuse her. This case stems from a 2018 op-ed Heard wrote for the Washington Postin which she identifies herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp was never mentioned by name in the op-ed, but he is suing Heard for $50 million; Heard countersued for $100 million.
Online, the controversy has taken on a creepy bent, being streamed, memed, and opined on from TikTok to TV to Twitter, with fandoms developing for each “side.” One screenshot shows a post calling for viewers to “like” the post to support Depp, and “retweet” to support Heard, like it’s the Super Bowl or something. An army of bots, ad buys from people like Ben Shapiro, and online men’s rights activists have laundered the online frenzy, as reported by Vox’s Aja Romano.
While these “fandoms” have developed on both “sides,” Heard has disproportionately been the target of harassment. These extensive campaigns position Heard as the abuser and Depp as the victim, bringing up that Heard hit Depp back, or has a longer history of problematic behavior. Because Heard harmed Depp, her own alleged abuse experiences are being discounted — as if she’s automatically lying about being abused because she too has done harm. To be clear, I’m actually not really interested in calling Heard “good;” plenty remember, for example, a tweet Heard posted in 2018 that was reasonably called out as racist. I’m saying that Heard shouldn’t have to be good to be believed.
In the five years – count ‘em, five – since #MeToo, we have barely developed any nuance. As New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldbergwrites, the trial marks “the death of #MeToo,” because, while survivors enjoyed a short period of time when their stories were mostly taken seriously, Heard has now been dragged through the mud, ridiculed, and shamed, all for telling her alleged #MeToo story, seemingly because she’s an imperfect victim.
We’ve seen a similar reversing-course with anti-feminist intent before with Gamergate, a misogynistic right-wing backlash from online gamers to feminism in the early 2010s. But instead of being relegated to the deep corners of the internet, your younger sibling and parents and teachers are equally as likely to catch an inflammatory TikTok or Facebook post about the trial as anyone else. TikToks mocking Heard are all over the app, and SNL even did a skit about the abuse trial. Much of the content online is in favor of Depp, and best believe, people are seeing this stuff. In late April, Buzzfeed News was already noting the outpouring of pro-Depp trial content; Kate Lindsay’s Embedded newsletter tracked it into the following weeks. As VICE’s Anna Merlan writes, “There’s an enormous amount of attention and money to be gained from weighing in on this trial, which is why news outlets and would-be influencers alike are spending so much time commentating on it… The trial isn’t just being memeified—it’s turning into an opportunity for monetization and attention.”
This relationship conflict has been manufactured into a spectacle — and for some, there’s more to gain than just a paycheck.
I use the word “spectacle” very intentionally, citing the scholarship of internet studies scholar Safiya Noble, professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2014, Noble wrote about the politics of spectacle in media depictions of murders of Black people, specifically following the death of Trayvon Martin and trial of George Zimmmerman. Noble called out the online treatment of Martin as “meme-ification.” Noble was not only concerned with the ample negative coverage of Martin surrounding his killing, which trafficked in longstanding antiblack stereotypes about criminality and Black masculinity; she was also wary of whether the celebratory coverage that sought to memorialize him could come through where it really counted.
“Much of the imagery circulating in social media and in popular online press featured images that promoted solidarity and compassion for Trayvon, such as the series of Ebony magazine covers that circulated and were written about by news outlets including HuffingtonPost.com,” Noble wrote. “[But] despite the efforts at counternarrative and empathetic outpourings, the dominant narrative of black criminality prevailed in one of the most important sites of power – the courtroom.” Zimmerman, as we know, was acquitted.
#MeToo was the manufacturing of a spectacle around sexual violence, one that those implicated started to move on from as early as 2018, as they began their returns to pop culture. Depp himself starred in the second Fantastic Beasts film in 2018– the year, coincidentally, that Heard’s Post op-ed was released, thus years after the abuse allegations were initially brought to light.
We do not need to conflate or compare forms of harm or their severity – and the obvious positional privilege of both Heard and Depp in comparison to a 17-year-old Black boy – to see the common sense in Noble’s argument. It is literalized through the get-rich-quick element of the Heard-Depp case. As NBC News’s Kat Tenbarge points out, if this becomes a blueprint for addressing relationship violence in the media, we can already see where it’ll head next, as musician Marilyn Manson files a defamation case against actress Evan Rachel Wood.
If the spectacle produces awareness of a problem, there is a growing concern it may also drive survivors back into silence – the only burden possibly lifted during #MeToo. The 19th reportssurvivor advocates are worried about Depp’s usage of defamation law becoming a tool for abusers to punish survivors for leaving, as well as having a chilling effect on survivors coming forward. “A defamation suit offers a perpetrator a deepening of the power disparities in the relationship and face-to-face contact with a survivor,” Nicole Bedera, PhD, a sociologist who studies sexual violence, told The 19th.
As Vox’s Romano pointed out, it kind of doesn’t matter what the outcome of the case is – especially given that Heard’s story of abuse (and the ensuing coverage of it in the Sun, the outlet that Depp sued) was vindicated in a British court, which actually has a lower standard for Depp’s accusations of defamation; that point has done little to minimize the absolute deluge of abuse towards Heard. No matter who wins, we are facing a future where abusers are even more emboldened to use the courts, and where survivors will begin to go silent once more.
I think of myself confronted with my stalker’s rejection of my side of the story. It’s never stopped haunting me: the fear that I must have misunderstood, that maybe I was the bad guy all along. But neither has my rape. I wish it would. Still, though they may try, I’m reminded that no lawsuit could take from me my story, which is mine, and my community, who believe me. Those aren’t up to the courts, or social media trolls, or even him.
