bad testimony
The worthy survivor—or, frankly, the simple fantasy of one—is nothing but a tool of measurement, against which all our evidence and all our pain is found insufficient.
I’m a real survivor, so I can tell she’s lying because she sounds like my abuser. I’m a real survivor, and when I was hit in the face, there was no way I could have covered those bruises with makeup like she did. I’m a real survivor, and find it suspect that she just took sleeping pills right after her rape instead of going to the hospital. I’m a real survivor and know that if she were a real victim, she’d have more medical evidence. I’m a real survivor, and when I had to testify about my assault, I wasn’t so performative. I’m a real survivor, and I get to tell you that this fake survivor, the exception to “Believe Survivors”, is no survivor at all—but instead, a gold-digging, attention-seeking, histrionic, manipulative, narcissistic, psychopath bitch. I’m a real survivor, so I can tell you that this one, it’s much more likely she painted on her bruises. I can tell you that she should have photographed her vaginal injuries right after her rape if it was really rape. That it’s not real because she only recorded him yelling and throwing things, but not of him actually beating or sexually assaulting her. I’m a real survivor and I know that if he really did what she says he did, she would be dead right now. But she isn’t, and so she must be lying. After all: I am a real survivor, so I get to tell you who to abuse. Because I know, better than all people, some bitches just deserve it.
To all the “real” “survivors” who use their stories to impugn hers: I ask you, what makes you so certain that you, yourself, are believable?
The dissonance is so tragic that it borders on comical.
I have been watching for weeks in complete disgust, rage, and heartbreak to see such an utter nightmare brought to life; it’s overwhelming and embarrassing how bitterly affected I feel. So many “real survivors” are all over social media right now justifying indescribable violence and I wish I were making up the cruel demands for photo and video evidence of unspeakable abuse. The hundreds if not thousands of people think it’s more believable that someone drew on her bruises even if she has numerous eye witnesses and medical records of her injuries. Or the fact that someone who has mountains more evidence and documentation than most of us ever will, can still never be exonerated because none of it will ever be enough. Never have I felt more certain that the category “survivor” is dead in the water; its bloated corpse ventriloquized to defend someone who beat, strangled, and raped his ex-wife repeatedly; someone who once hired a personal medical team to drug and over-medicate her into placidity; someone who has dragged her into a circus of public humiliation while the world has screamed on in primal ecstacy.
The word that comes to mind is unforgivable. One day, this victim, Amber Heard, will have her redemption arc; hopefully more quickly than other maligned women like Monica Lewinsky or Anita Hill or Britney Spears. The thing about the redemption arc, though, is that while it ostensibly brings about a reckoning—hardly anyone who caused the suffering and societal vilification will ever have to feel remorse, admit they were wrong, or change. The individual victim at the center is “redeemed” but what happens in it is another type of objectification, in which the “redemption” of the bad woman automatically stands in for the collective’s. It restores a type of collective esteem that we are worth saving, in spite of the fact that no one is fucking saying sorry or making amends. Instead it’s, oh! A new hot take! Did you know that actually, this person who we burned alive, that they were a person after all? WOW. CRAZY. We are so much better now. The absurd arrogance of assuming that personal enlightenment is the same as repair or change or forgiveness is exactly what the fuck is wrong with so much bullshit left politics these days. Meanwhile the victim blaming does not change, it advances. Turns all our language of survival into weapons of batterers and rapists. It isn’t subtle; rarely happens without a sound. Sometimes, in moments like this, it roars in jubilation.
Her many abusers and tormentors, the lawyers and streamers and bloggers and influencers and media outlets profiteering from her degradation: may they never be redeemed, may they never know peace. May they be haunted by their own words and actions for the rest of their lives. And I know perfectly well they won’t be. In ten years, maybe they’ll look back and say, “wow, that was so wrong! I totally knew she was being victimized,” even as today they make TikToks mocking her stories of rape and beatings, create and share fanart in which she is shot through the forehead, write fanfiction in which she is finally, at last, beaten to death by Depp. (So many ways to say that she should have died, because she would have been more credible then. So many ways to deny that this message is not simply for her, but for the rest of us too.)
When I think of testimony, I first think of the courts: not just the act of testifying under oath, but the limitations under which you are allowed to speak. What constitutes hearsay, or is objectionable and out of scope, and should be stricken from the record. I’ve seen multiple survivors over the years stumble through the ways that lawyers whittle down their stories with a heavy handed precision. I’ve witnessed them not being allowed to describe the events leading up to a violent altercation, not allowed to submit clarifying evidence of abuse, not allowed to speak on the things that informed their fear, and thus, their decision making. With this trial, a social media trial just as much as it is a legal one, I’m seeing again in real time the way that the scope of what is acceptable for a survivor to say or do is shaved down and tightened until it becomes a chokehold. This is happening as we are witnessing a coordinated strangulation of how women, trans, and queer people are allowed to exist. This case is both a sign of the times as well as something that will shape them. Naysayers might argue that this is only happening because Heard is particularly damnable and unlikeable, and that a better, more credible victim would receive less vitriol. However, I believe that it matters far less how a ‘worthy’ victim is received. The worthy survivor—or, frankly, the simple fantasy of one—is nothing but a tool of measurement, against which all our evidence and all our pain is found insufficient. The real canary in the coal mine for our climate of misogyny is what happens to the bad survivor: that one we can say is the exception to “Believe Survivors,” the one we see as the most contemptible; most deserving of merciless humiliation. For victims are only ever one precarious step away from becoming that detested liar. Meanwhile, the promises of support for the innocent, perfect victim, all of that will always be a mirage; always be just out of reach.
I know that most of my friends aren’t paying attention to this case for understandable reasons—the media breathlessly reports to the tenor of celebrity gossip; it involves the white and exorbitantly wealthy; the parties at hand are privileged and out of touch Hollywood stars; we’re all fucking depressed or sick or both; they have other things to care about. I wasn’t paying attention either, until I realized that this trial will have enormous reverbrations for so many more victims of domestic violence and rape. I can’t even begin to list off all the ways in which this is true. Mainstream organizations like Me Too, Time’s Up, RAINN, and NOW, as well as most of us who believe ourselves smarter, better, have failed to grasp what the right wing has: white supremacists and MRA’s have seized this opportunity as a rallying cry, a radicalizing event, a celebration, and a declaration of war, because they have accurately identified this case as a lightning rod for further empowering misogynists and other fascists. Ben Shapiro, among other white supremacists, has poured upwards of $50,000 in promoting this disinformation campaign against a proven victim of domestic violence.
Choosing not to engage because you’re overloaded and it’s simply not your priority in this time of endless devastation, I completely understand. But “woman leaves abusive man that nearly kills her; he reacts by swearing vengeance and does everything in his power to destroy and discredit her” is not the first world problem people are framing it as. The way that some disavow sympathy altogether in the name of class or whiteness is, quite frankly, a bit unhinged. What I see is not principled solidarity with worthier, more politically deserving victims. People like this hardly even spare a thought for the countless inconvenient survivors in their communities and in their prisons anyway. What I see instead is the endless conflation of principles with misogyny that simply has a quieter, less noticeable valve because everyone else is doing it. Why should we care? And so the levers go. The flood comes. We don’t mind.
I see in this event all my memories of witnessing the wreckage and pain. How it is ripped open for victims with every fucking act of retaliatory litigation abuse across legal systems. I see all the loved ones and former clients who were abandoned and abused again through the law—what chance would they have today if they have not even a fraction of the resources Amber Heard does? If they are non-white, or poor, or sex workers, or migrants, or trans, or have prior criminal convictions, or or or, what chance do they have of peace, let alone justice should they go up against a rich, famous, and powerful man? I’ve seen what happens with these odds, many of us have. We already fucking know. We’ve known.
This is the most deranged awareness-raising campaign in which victims are being reassured by the masses (and “fellow survivors”) that they don’t stand a chance of being believed or left the fuck alone if they say shit; a sentiment commonly seen in domestic violence. Instead of hearing about how to support survivors who are not deemed perfect victims, many are instead being taught that any and all acts of self preservation in the face of abuse constitute abuse themselves. And thousands more, they are learning about litigation abuse not by discerning the violence inherent to it… but by joining the party and partaking as gleeful proxy abusers.
To quote the New York Times, “It’s tempting to ignore all of this — to refuse to feed the machine with even more attention. But like Gamergate, which took an obscure gaming-community controversy and inflated it into an internet-wide anti-feminist harassment campaign and a broader right-wing movement, this nihilistic circus is a potentially radicalizing event. When the trial ends this week, the elaborate grassroots campaign to smear a woman will remain, now with a plugged-in support base and a field-tested harassment playbook. All it needs is a new target.”
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Harpers Bazaar: Why Are So Many Survivors Supporting Johnny Depp?
Rolling Stone: Johnny Depp Trial Unlocks New Way for Abusers to Exert Power Over Survivors, Experts Worry
The New Yorker: The Johnny Depp–Amber Heard Trial Is Not as Complicated as You May Think
VICE: The Daily Wire Spent Thousands of Dollars Promoting Anti-Amber Heard Propaganda
The New York Times: TikTok’s Amber Heard Hate Machine
The New York Times: Why We Love to Watch a Woman Brought Low
Vox: Why the Depp-Heard trial is so much worse than you realize