it is the year of the witch
2022, Heard-Depp Trial, and the complexity of womanhood and abuse.
Disclaimer: I won’t be explaining detail by detail why I believe Heard, if you are interested read Michael Hobbes’ exposition of the evidence that was presented during the trial.
The misogyny I witnessed since April 2022 made me wanna beg for a lobotomy. I felt my brain blowing out stacks of blood every time I entered Twitter. I was called a witch, bitch, slut. I saw everyone around me, friends, strangers on the internet, sexists, women who call themselves feminists—all of them, bewitched by a trial. I overheard conversations on several buses, restaurants, parties, and dinners—all defending a sexist arrogant asshole. I have been a feminist for around 8 years now, I have felt gaslighted and insane multiple times, but this is the first time I thought in all seriousness: “huh, the world really hates women”
On November 17th a miraculous thing happened, more than 140 domestic violence experts, feminist organizations, and activists signed an open letter supporting Amber Heard. The letter includes organizations like Women’s March, The National Organization for Women, Center for Judicial Excellent, Impact, etc; and experts like the very own Gloria Steinem, Sarah Ahmed, Renee Adams, and a hundred more scholars specialized in sociology, psychology, and gender studies from so many universities, including but not excluding, Harvard, The University of Michigan, Boston University, etc. These are experts who have dedicated their whole life to analyzing structures of power and how they play within abuse. I ran to Twitter joyously to what seemed a shift in public opinion, only to see Johnny Depp stans trending #1 again. To their clockwork rhetoric, it did not matter how many experts signed that letter, Amber Heard will remain a witch because she is a woman who dared to speak up against abuse.
Self-proclaimed contrarians and modern-day heretics claim with such ecstasy: “EUREKA! Women lie!”, “Abuse is not a gender issue”, “WOMEN ARE EVIL!!”. The other half who pride themselves in being centrists claim with a holier-than-thou voice: “the case showed that it was mutual abuse” “just because Amber lied, it does not mean that all women lie”, “who cares about celeb feud omg!”. Little do they all know that they are regurgitating centuries of misogynistic discourse, that they are not adding a single drop of a nuanced intelligent point to the conversation. In spite of the rise of celebrity- girlboss- liberal feminism, and of the feminist t-shirts sold at Forever 21, the reality remains that being anti-feminist does not make you a contrarian. Of all the people I’ve met in my life, all the friends who say they believe women, all the strangers I’ve passed on the streets, and all the people I’ve come across in multiple countries, I can honestly say that out of all of them, I can count those who are truly feminists with the fingers of my hand.
In fact, this trial could have taken place in the 1600s and the peasants would have had the same reaction. Let me remind the “Amber Heard is an abuser” crowd that the trial was not to prove whether she was an abuser or not, the trial was to prove that Amber was a liar. Johnny won the defamation trial in Virginia, a location carefully chosen, given Virginia’s weak Anti-SLAPP laws (law experts claim that the case could have turned out differently in California). The Sun and Amber won the case in the U.K (Judge Mr. Justice Nicol found 12 of the 14 alleged incidents of domestic violence to be true). Both in the U.K. and in the U.S., Depp’s lawyers used the same strategies to make their case, they attacked her and claimed she was the abusive partner. So, why were the results different? Asides from Virginia Anti-SLAPP laws, the fact that the U.S. trial was public (a point Amber objected to) and created a vitriolic mass reaction was probably one of the main factors influencing the decision. Instead of being a carefully examined case, it was a witch trial. In spite of the horrendous results, the truth remains that Johnny Depp is a court-certified wife-beater, and Amber is a public-certified liar. And there’s nothing the world loves more than to “prove” that women, not men, are evil, and punish them for it; especially if they behaved in a way that is improper to behave for a woman.
Historians report that most of the women accused of witchcraft were women who fell outside gender stereotypes. “Witches” were usually old, single, crude, quarrelsome, and they rejected ladylike mannerisms. In her insightful essay, Who is Afraid of Amber Heard (a mandatory reading for this article), Rayne Fisher-Quann says “good girls don’t report domestic violence”. I would like to add a couple of rules: good girls don’t react with even a flinch to abuse, good girls let themselves be hit and never hit back, good girls don’t curse or scream or lose their temperance. Amber Heard’s reaction to her abuse was disgraceful, messy, poignant, but the truth is that you are never going to find a victim who behaves differently. And if they do, it is their fault for being stupid white lambs. Like Rayne, I don’t believe that Amber Heard is a feminist hero. She is a celebrity who has had her fair share of mistakes that Depp survivors love to chant of course: “oh but she dated Elon Musk”, “oh but she was rude to an assistant”.
I ask, when are men going to be held to the same standards of moral purity women are held to? Johnny Depp has defended Roman Polanski, Harvey Weinstein, Marilyn Manson; he has been racist, homophobic, transphobic, and most of all, misogynist. He constantly refers to women as cunts, sluts, whores, worthless hookers. He has said that he wanted to “drown and rape [Amber’s] dead body” way before they were even married and the abuse started (even according to his timeline), he claimed that a woman’s pussy was rightfully his, etc. And the neutral crowd wants to claim that both of these people are equally awful? Let me make this perfectly clear, it’s not as if I’m incapable of criticizing women’s wrongdoings and as if I classify all of their actions as empowering, I am NOT a liberal feminist. I’m specifically interested in criticizing women’s misuse of power in situations where they have it via class, age, race, etc. But are men's rights activists interested in criticizing these structures of power? No, they only criticize women’s “morals” to justify their abuse against them, they love to pretend their morality has something to do with their misogyny. This is why Eve was created as a scapegoat in the first place. Women are the source of all evil according to Christianity. It is much easier to blame the entire downfall of society on a single woman than to examine the history of colonialism, empires, and capitalism. Men rather point fingers at women than evaluate the systems they gave birth to (e.g. men rather spend their time criticizing “girlbosses” CEOs with misogynists arguments instead of attacking the system that allows these CEOs to be ruthless [cough cough capitalism] ) We, feminists, have been understanding enough to know that these are products of the patriarchy and not individual’s faults. We still see men as complex people, but when will they return us that compassion?
I highly doubt that day will come. For men, women are not humans, they are half-shaped mythological species that have the ability to shapeshift to cater to men’s needs. Men want women to be caste and pure? They will be angels with a halo and forest fairies. But not too caste as to not give men sex when they want it? They will be nymphs and devilish mermaids then. Society is failing and the consequences of misogyny are splashing on men’s faces? They will be witches then. Somebody on Twitter said to me that they knew Amber was the abuser only by the fact that she was pretty. Apparently, women are also Medusas…
As Simone de Beauvoir argues, to be a woman in a patriarchal world is to be a source of mystery, a platonic essence, a product of philosophic imagination. I propose that to be a woman is to metamorphose, to put on a show, a display of smoke and mirrors, a one-dimensional screen that projects what men want. It is pure witchcraft. This performance is all because, to pronounce the most famous words Beauvoir uttered, ONE IS NOT BORN A WOMAN, ONE BECOMES ONE. One is not born a man either, of course, manhood is a social construct, but it is the dominant one. As sociologists and poststructuralists would argue social categories are created in dichotomies and binaries, and one has to oppose and dominate the other. Masculinity, therefore, is socially constructed as the universal norm by which humanity is defined. The gender roles and expectations for men attempt to construct them as powerful and complex subjects, while the expectations for women are filled with contradictions that they can never live up to, leaving out the possibility of them ever being fully fleshed. As Beauvoir says, “He is the subject, he is the absolute, she is the other”. She claims, “he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object”.
The treatment of Amber Heard during the trial proved Beauvior’s claims: men see women as myths, fantasies, objects. Amber was analyzed as if she was a specter, an ephemeral substance, a one-time show— tale as old as time. Let’s go back to the 1600s to see if the so-called progress men beg us to be grateful for has really happened: Shakespeare's plays had plots where the town folks would prove women were liars by looking at their bodies. In Much Ado About Nothing, a fiance believes his girlfriend did not cheat, not because of her words, but because of the “sign and semblance of her honor” (4.1.32). Yeah, it sounds exactly like how some misogynists determine who is guilty and innocent today. Here’s where this gets interesting: the whole purpose of Much Ado About Nothing was to show how bodies and illusions are deceptive. Shakespeare, a man living in the 1600s, was aware of this truth. So much for progress.
“Modern” men, on the other hand, follow textbook misogyny while believing they are being revolutionary. They still believe in illusions, myths, hermetics, pseudoscience. In despite of all the evidence, of all her testimonies, of all the pain she exhibited, the single thing that was most analyzed about Amber was her body language—every hair flip, every laugh, every quiver, every tear was dissected
What Johnny Depp supporters conveniently ignore though is that body language reading is a pseudoscience to which real psychologists oppose. A 2021 study by Tessa Mapala used all of the latest body-language technology to read people and concluded that “the non-verbal cues assessed could not distinguish between honest and deceptive people.” Yes, men’s body language is also seldom analyzed, but the difference is that, unlike women, men’s words are taken seriously. As the feminist theorist Adrienne Rich claims, “[t]he old, male idea of honor. A man’s word sufficed to other men—without guarantee”. In contrast, women’s words are always a product of a secret ploy, they are part of a carefully elaborated script, one that she constructed with the only purpose of creating a show (this is the male gaze). The art critic, John Berger, who has talked extensively about the male gaze, argues that if a woman makes a good joke, it is an example of “how she treats the joker in herself and accordingly of how she would wish it to be treated by others”, only men can make a good joke for its own sake. He says “men act, women appear”.
Here we are, more than a thousand years after the Greek empire fell and we are still elusive myths. These are the failings of liberal feminism. This is when their “women are girlbosses" and their “everything they do is empowering” motto starts to fall. Their motto was easy to attack in the first place because it is a shallow analysis of gender and structures of power. Saying all women are “good” is a one-dimensional characterization that misogynists use against us and that consequently expects victims to behave in a certain way.
Their lack of intersectionality shows why they don’t understand the dynamics of abuse. Obviously, women are not girlbosses, and obviously, not everything they do is empowering, women harm other women, especially if they have some privilege over them, and yes, there are situations where I would believe a man, but in order to do that I would have to analyze the power dynamics in a relationship because abuse is by definition about an imbalance of power of control (this is why all psychology, sociology, and DV experts agree that mutual abuse does not exist). This is the great failing of liberal modern-day feminism: a mindblowing inability to analyze structures of power. Liberal feminists had no arguments against the accusations of Depp stans. They had to believe Johnny was innocent and use Amber as an exception of how victims act when she is, in fact, a textbook victim. Let's examine the power relationship once and for all: Amber was 23 when she met him, Johnny was 55. He had more money than her and more social status. He was an addict, and she became codependent (not to say that drugs are the reason for the abuse, or that all addicts are abusive, I am saying that the codependency added to the power imbalance). Both of them were white, and able-bodied, so that checks out. So what power did she have? He had the money to control her, the age imbalance to intimidate her, the promise of being sober to manipulate her, the reputation (that proved to be indestructible during the trial) to convince her to shut up, and, of course, the power manhood creates, the power that grants their words seriously, the power to other someone else and take their humanity away while doing it, the power that permits them to abuse people and get away with it in the first place. I ask, why would a 24-year-old woman pick on a 55-year-old white powerful man as prey? If she was the harp everyone says she is, she could have chosen an 18-year-old guy, not Johnny fucking Depp. Let me paint a clearer picture, there’s a reason why you never hear that an underage child is abusing a parent. How could a 10-year-old who has no money or experience in this world abuse a 40-year-old parent who financially and socially controls them? It’s simply not possible. The state protects that parent and gives them all the rights to have power over a child. That power is granted in so many other relationships, it is just more visible in that last example.
We may believe we don’t live in an all-powerful, controlling society as medieval folks who lived under a monarchy did, but power still lurks around. Foucault argued that a society where control and power are visible is weaker than one where it is hidden—the latter makes people willful to adhere to social norms. We believe that we have power. We believe that we all are democratic individuals shaping this society. Truth is, that a society that is hierarchically structured, from the government to the family, is nothing but a lie of democracy. I ask, how are we supposed to fight for equality in a system where rights are something that we have to ask the elites to give us? How come we live in a society where four rich dudes and a whitey rich woman in a Supreme Court can decide the future of abortion in America? This is where the liberals will say: “THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE TO VOTE”. And I say to them: “Sorry, I don’t see politics through the lens of a Marvel movie.” The problem is not that awful people in the supreme court were elected, the problem is that no one, no matter how good or evil they are, should have that much power over someone else. But control and power are so normalized invisible elements in this society that this is precisely why people fail to recognize abusers, and why they think that abusers are a deviation from the norm, when in fact these are the people that are following the most dominant message this society gives us.
To be clear, I am not an accelerationist, I do see material benefits in voting for the least worse option in the meantime—but believing that we are going to fight a whole oppressive structure by voting is like believing you can change a really toxic guy. The reason why we feminists say “all men” is because we are criticizing the whole patriarchal system that formed each of these guys. The patriarchy is not going to change if we just focus on mending specific guys, and neither if we decide to choose and trust that the “good men” are in office. The problem is the system itself. I am talking about the police that tortures anyone because they have the authority to do so, the courts that time and time again put the interest of the rich above the people, the prisons that don’t rehabilitate but punish, the corrupt governments that steal from the working-class, the nuclear family that often takes advantage of children and women, even if unwittingly so. I am not interested in reforming any of these systems. We already had this discussion during BLM, we don't want “reformation”, we want freedom. I will repeat this once more, NO ONE SHOULD HAVE THAT MUCH POWER OVER ANYONE ELSE. People ask me if I am a utopist or if I trust people way too much for me to think that we will be able to live without these systems. The answer is the total opposite. I don’t trust people to act in structures of power and control, that’s why the most logical conclusion is to abolish it.
This is why fighting these systems from the inside is most often futile. We can peacefully protest and share feminist infographics, but that won't change much of the cultural zeitgeist. This demands direct action. As the anarchist library defines it:
When people carry out a direct action, they are rejecting the state’s monopoly on decision-making, and asserting their own autonomy while providing an example for others to follow. To take just one example, rather than petitioning a politician to vote against the construction of a pipeline or appealing to state-controlled regulatory bodies, those who favour a direct action approach often find it more effective and empowering to go out and block the pipeline themselves… directly. Direct action can also be used to set up networks of mutual aid.
Feminist direct action often looks like creating abortion mutual aid groups and funds, protecting victims by offering them our homes and communities, fighting abusers, even if it means punching them on the street, etc. Overall, it is about creating bonds of mutual safety without depending on the power of the state. This goes beyond protecting Amber Heard. Men saw what Johnny successfully pulled off, and they want to recreate it on their victims. Marilyn Manson (dear friend of Depp) sued Evan Rachel Wood coincidentally around the same time the Depp-Heard trial was happening, Brad Pitt’s close sources claimed recently that Angelina has started a smear campaign against him amid abuse allegations, and more importantly, perhaps, so many women that don’t have any financial security or social power are being accused of defamation or choosing to not come forward at all. It’s glaring. This is the cultural repression of the largely ineffective liberal MeToo movement. What comes out of this can no longer be just hashtags. As Berger reminds us when he talks about the dangers of the male gaze, men act, woman appear. It is time to act.