Amber Heard: Victim, Villain, or Both?
Can you be both victim and villain?
Actor Johnny Depp won his defamation lawsuit against actress and ex-wife, Amber Heard. She has to pay him over 10 million dollars because a jury determined, in a civil case, that she defamed Depp in a Washington Post op-ed written in 2018. In the op-ed, Heard claimed… “I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”
This has been a polarizing case. There are people, the majority, who put their full support behind Depp. They see him as the face of male domestic violence. For them, Depp represents the silenced and shamed male victim of a female abuser. For them, men who have suffered in silence had their day in court, and showed that women can be abusers too. Also, for them, this case proved that women lie, and are not always to be believed. Of course, some of these supporters just hate women, or they were frustrated with what they think the #MeToo movement did to their status as men.
The thing is — women are not always believed. This is a misconception that flies in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Women are not always believed when they claim abuse — in fact, men often get away with abusive behaviors, while the woman is put on trial.
