The Johnny Depp\u2013Amber Heard Verdict Is Chilling
During closing arguments in the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard, one of Heard\u2019s attorneys, Benjamin Rottenborn, described a series of Catch-22s that often ensnare women who, like Heard, accuse their partners of domestic violence. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t take pictures, it didn\u2019t happen; if you did take pictures, they\u2019re fake,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t tell your friends, you\u2019re lying; and if you did tell your friends, they\u2019re part of the hoax. If you didn\u2019t seek medical treatment, you weren\u2019t injured; if you did seek medical treatment, you\u2019re crazy.\u201d
I mean it strikes me that people’s issues with Heard aren’t so much that, put in a no-win situation, she didn’t win, but that she was even trying to win, that as she continued in the relationship she acted in ways that weren’t even attempts to get what she wanted in the relationship, but set herself up in a better position to portray the relationship to others afterwards \u2013 including but not limited to in court \u2013 in a way that won their sympathy and advanced her overall position in life to which the relationship was just one aspect (presumably, in expectation of it ending \u2013 it’s unclear what she could do with documentation of abuse in a world where the semipublic relationship continued)
It strikes me that this \u2013 conducting your life for the sake of winning public sympathy battles after the fact \u2013 might be the real of-the-moment thing the culture is publicly condemning here.
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