When Men’s Violence Against Women is Trending
trigger warning: this post will delve into topics including domestic violence, abuse in many of its forms (sexual, verbal, physical), disordered eating and racism. if any of these subjects are sensitive topics for you or are not conducive to maintaining your mental health, feel free to skip this one.
Before we get into the very grim content of this post let me explain the title. It was an intentional choice to phrase this as 'men's violence against women' instead of just 'violence against women'. Dr Jackson Katz whom I was first introduced to during an episode of iWeigh with Jameela Jamil has a TEDtalk titled 'Violence against women -- it's a men's issue'. In it, he discusses how issues like domestic violence and sexual abuse are commonly referred to as women's issues. The focus is placed on the group that is most often the victim, instead of the group [men] who are most often the perpetrators. 'Why we don't analyze the actions of perpetrators as closely as we do victims has its roots in part in how society views dominant groups.' Doing something as simple as calling it 'men's violence against women' brings this dominant group back into the conversation and places the onus where it should be; on the male perpetrators rather than using language that makes this a passive issue or suggests that this kind of violence just happens. With that in mind, let's get into this.
My husband and I started to refer to TikTok as 'the trial app' after the first week of the infamous Depp vs. Heard trial because as much as I tried to not engage in the content, it was inescapable. TikTok is the platform where clickbait, out-of-context quotes and misinformation thrive. All this mayhem started because Amber Heard said 11 very specific words. In a 2018 op-ed for the Washington Post she wrote, "Two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse." That's all. That's all it took for Johnny Depp to sue her. That's all it took for her to end up buried in at least 6 million US dollars' worth of legal fees. One thing the public seems to keep forgetting about this trial is that it was not trying to prove whether either party [Depp or Heard] had ever been abusive. Some of that was put to question, yes, but the crux of the matter was defamation.
defamation / noun/ dɛfəˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/
the action of damaging the good reputation of someone; slander or libel.
So the jury's task was not to determine if Depp had ever been violent towards Heard or in general because frankly there is a lot of evidence confirming that to be true. Their mission was to determine whether Heard speaking out about this violence had negatively affected Depp's career. I hate it here.
Over the six-week trial, we were shown time and time again that our society hates women. If you have ever doubted how cruel the world can be or why more victims don't speak out you only need to spend a few minutes on the clock app. Your soul may need some cleansing afterwards but at least you'll begin to understand just how bleak it all can be. Despite her fame, her riches and her mountain of evidence, Heard lost the case. Because all it takes is a few out-of-context clips, international vitriol and a lot of creative storytelling for a jury to not even consider ruling in your favour. This trial was not only televised, it was the top story on every platform, every day for at least a month. I also fell victim to a lot of this editing; though I tried to remember that we didn't have the full picture, I laughed along with some of the edits and started to dislike her. Much like how the overexposure of Julia Gillard and Taylor Swift led to some collective hatred of these women by the public, Heard was everything, everywhere all at once and I could see the hatred growing even in my mind.
It's problematic that this happened to me but the jury for this trial wasn't sequestered or sheltered from this content in any way, meaning that the same thing was happening to them. 'One man was allowed to stay in the jury pool after revealing a text from his wife that read, "Amber is psychotic."' I don't know much about court cases, but I do know that the jury is meant to be impartial. Or at least they’re meant to pretend to be. Depp claimed that Heard had 'fabricated these stories' [almost all of which have not only concrete evidence to back them up but that have been proven to be true in the UK court] to maintain relevancy. A disgusting call-back to the notion that women will falsely accuse a powerful man to secure fame and fortune for themselves. As if we haven't seen Heard and multitudes of other women have their careers, personal lives and mental health ruined all because they dared to tell the truth.
Before you start to discredit me for ignoring that Amber Heard also has problems of her own – I'm not. Their own couple's counsellor testified that they engaged in 'mutual abuse'. Heard herself has admitted that at the end of the relationship something shifted in her. "I would try to stand up for myself," she said. "I would push back, I would push him off of me. … I would yell at him and scream at him, I would call him ugly names." The point I hope that I’m making is that none of her behaviours should ever be used as justification for Depp’s violent behaviour towards her.
I'm going to shift gears and start talking about another situation that trended on the internet. Late last year, news that Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid had broken up surfaced seemingly out of nowhere. In the weeks that followed the announcement, news came out that behind the scenes, Malik was being accused by Yolanda Hadid (Gigi's mother) of yelling insults at her and pushing her into a dresser. This alleged assault occurred after Yolanda had barged into Malik's residence to see her granddaughter without notifying anyone of her visit or knocking at the door. We don't have all the facts so I will not be commenting on the viability of either of these statements or the accuracy of the claims made by either party. What I want to focus on is the chilling behaviour Zayn Malik/ One Direction stans exhibited on the internet following these reports.
Edits of Zayn Malik looking sad or forlorn took over my Instagram explore page in the days and weeks following these reports. My TikTok became ground zero for a Yolanda Hadid smear campaign with basically every problematic thing she has ever said or hinted at coming to the surface all at once. Keep in mind, this was many months before the world would learn that Bella Hadid had [with her parents' permission] gotten a nose job at the age of 14 yet the internet already had a lot to hate Yolanda for. There were videos of Gigi talking about her history with disordered eating interspersed with clips of her mother nibbling at almonds or telling her daughters to eat less. It was all very very dark. Somehow, the worst thing was not the posts themselves but the content in the comment sections. In their episode titled ‘Ghost boys are good at sex’ the hosts of the Shameless podcast went through some of these comments which included things like, "Zayn took one for the team", "I don't even blame Zayn at this point", and "If Zayn didn't beat her, I will." * These weren't unpopular opinions on this side of the internet. Almost all of them had thousands of likes, some had hundreds of thousands. It seems that no matter what sides of TikTok the algorithm normally placed you on, for a brief moment, the entire world was simultaneously on the 'let's hate Yolanda' side.
*you can see a TikTok clip of this segment here
Yolanda Hadid has some terrible quotes on the record. She has a history of being controlling, racist, fatphobic and misogynistic to name a few of her wrongdoings. None of that is up for debate right now. Amber Heard doesn't have the best history either. Once again, that's not my point. What I want to discuss is why at times like these, instead of either saying and posting nothing or advocating for women who have been abused or mistreated by men, we as a society leap to trying to 'expose' the victim [alleged or not] as being somehow deserving of that violence. It sets up such a dangerous precedent, for our first response when a woman speaks out to be airing all her dirty laundry. As if a myriad of problematic comments makes you deserving of being shoved into a cupboard. As if nagging, belittling or berating someone makes you deserving of years of physical, verbal and sexual abuse.
Neither Hadid nor Heard is a 'perfect' victim. They aren't easily likeable. They aren't even close to being aspirational characters. Guess what, that's irrelevant. I've seen this desire for a 'perfect' victim play out time and time again whenever a black person gets shot by supposed law enforcement in America. We flood our timelines with all their accolades and quotes from people that knew them that tug at our heartstrings. Or we see the far-right or news media use their mugshot in the reporting or put on blast their history of petty theft or drug-related incidences. I don't even think we realise we're doing it but all that these actions achieve is the enforcement of a narrative where some victims are more or less deserving of the crimes committed against them. We try to balance out their actions and attempt to figure out the sum of all their parts as if that will either justify the crime or make it even more of a tragedy.
That shooting isn't just unfair because he used to play the violin at old people's homes. His history of shoplifting or petty theft doesn't give those men an excuse for what they did. We don't have to like a woman to be able to acknowledge that she should not have been abused. It really should be that simple.
exhibits a through z
many thanks to this article by friend of the blog Michael Hobbes which helped me wrap my head around the Depp vs. Heard fiasco and provided some much-appreciated commentary
Show News | Gigi Hadid and Zayn Malik Break Up After Argument with Her Mom
Show News | Yolanda Hadid Has Been Crowned as the Worst Mom in the World and Here Is the Proof
the Daily Mail | Zayn Malik confronted Yolanda Hadid after she 'barged' into his and ex Gigi's family home without 'calling or even knocking at the door' before coming in