Time to believe Amber Heard

According to the British Court, Johnny Depp beat his ex-wife Amber Heard. So what's stopping the rest of us?

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s testimonies are harrowing all by themselves. Speaking broadly, witness testimonies can be persuasive, and with the two actors in the dock, the absolute truth can never  be assured. Still, despite the fact that London’s High Court previously found allegations that Johnny Depp was a “wife-beater” to be “substantially true,” the netizens appears to have overwhelmingly picked Depp’s side. Last week #JusticeForJohnnyDepp was trending on Twitter; yesterday, it was #AmberTurd.

The anti-Heard sentiment is palpable according to the social media. The memes have been wild and aggressive, sometimes consisting of a spot-the-difference comparison with domestic-abuse victims; at other times, televised courtroom footage has been appropriated to openly mock her appearance. It's an obvious misogyny. The company behind the makeup compact Heard used to hide her bruises even made a TikTok video disputing her claims. Heard is being systematically jeered at and ridiculed like a medieval criminal in the stocks as she catalogues historic abuse, as she alleges rape. Have we completely lost track of the severity of these allegations?

Jonny Depp fans will side with Johnny Depp and that's understandable. But even the less aggressively Depp-pilled of us want to believe that the Pirate of the Caribbean is innocent and blameless, if not squeaky clean then at least under the duress of drug addiction or acting out of character; that his violence can be somewhat explained away by a lapse of judgment or circumstance or both. We certainly don’t want to believe that this entire court case is a precise and conniving operation in discrediting Amber Heard, regardless of what she has to say, regardless of her truth.

And regardless of what Heard did or didn’t suffer at the hands of Depp, isn’t the relentless meme-ing of her a form of violence in itself? Is the pummeling by social media not a type of psychological assault? Are we not witnessing a modern-day witch trial?

Some weeks the internet is buoyant, all of us kept afloat by daft dresses and Kardashian weddings and Marvel actors saying they’ve never been in the same room. Other weeks it just feels too heavy. We’re watching people actively seek out humor in domestic abuse as Roe v. Wade is terrorized by pro-lifers and as we see yet more episodes of racially aggravated violence. We’ll rally, we always rally, but right here, right now, it feels shit.

Though I’ve felt myself veering towards it, I can no longer “both sides” this. It’s time to draw a line. It’s time to believe women, all women. It’s time to believe Heard. The British courts believed Johnny Depp beat his ex-wife. What’s stopping the rest of us?

Note: Please don't make it personal as this article only states what we feel and think. Please share your opinions down below as we'd love to see what people really think of this situation.