Radical Misogyny, Insidious Trauma, and Amber Heard: The Fascist State of Mind Upholding Patriarchy

In acknowledgement of International Women's Day...

Hello Friends, and Happy (very belated 2024)

I know it has been a long time since you’ve last heard from me on here. You can blame it on pesky health issues and a surgery back in November.

But I am back for the time being, and in honour of so I’d like to share a paper with you all I wrote in the Fall 2023 semester that I will be presenting at the upcoming National Conference of Undergraduate Research next month.

Without further blabbling from me, buckle up and get ready for some feminism and psychoanalysis!

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The hope that #MeToo as a movement generated at its conception in the wake of Jody Kantor and Megan Twohey’s Harvey Weinstein exposé quickly disintegrated in 2022 with the Fairfax County, Virginia defamation trial of John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard. Few things in my ordinary day to day workings have been more peculiar than it was to be a person supporting Amber Heard as a survivor of intimate partner violence from her marriage with Johnny Depp as the trial ran from April to June of that year. Through this time, extending to the present given great deal of materials to look over when delving into the case, I have developed a strong case that the implicit reasoning behind this trigger-happy misogyny emitting online and in public spaces boils down to a push against feminist ideologies that seek women’s submission socially and economically – namely, their silence and regression to male-idealized notions of femininity. The direction the events of the trial as described here and throughout the course of this paper ultimately boils down to the simple fact that it was permitted to be livestreamed. A trial containing stories of rape and physical assault was now to be broadcasted to the whole world, unfettered. Without constant, direct access to Depp’s claims of Heard defaming him after coming forward with her testimony, the heinousness that unfolded would not have ever occurred. 

This article seeks to gain a critical understanding of this specific trauma, reviewing the notorious defamation trial of Depp versus Heard. I will examine this trial using under the umbrella of two terms – “insidious trauma” and “radical misogyny” – that I believe best encapsulate the situation created out of the live-streamed trial and the reactions on social media, namely X and TikTok. Most effective in Ann Cvetkovich’s explorations throughout An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures is her employment of “insidious trauma” – engendered with its earliest meanings by Laura Brown — made insidious by the lack of outrage given toward the act of violence in its wake and support toward the victim. The term, as argued by both authors, can do powerful work as the traditional usage of trauma/PTSD “cannot do justice to the traumatic effects of a sexism that does its work precisely by being constructed as normal” (163). Critical in rejecting universalizing readings of trauma, insidious trauma ousts the moments of reified patterns of intolerance toward a female or feminized Other that infiltrates everyday experience and into a space for critique and social change. My term, “radical misogyny,” makes misogyny radical in the same way that trauma becomes insidious: through minimal response, perhaps even normalized entirely. These terms lie at the heart of my feminist-based research, alongside the work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas, namely using what he describes as “the fascist state of mind,” which I argue stands at the basis of rabid misogyny-based responses in society. Amber Heard’s situation, as publicly displayed, epitomizes the traumatic treatment of the female subject, the archive and impact of which will circulate forever in the digital age.

To work through the dynamics of misogyny, applied to the case of Amber Heard and women who have suffered at the hands of their abuser, I refer to Kate Manne’s Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, which notes that “sexism is bookish, misogyny is combative… sexism has a theory, misogyny wields a cudgel” (160). Manne’s argument as outlined in her book, especially when considering the text is one of the first philosophical writings concerning contemporary manifestations of misogyny, is alarmingly accurate to the situation of Heard. More horrifically, her experience with coming forth about abuse represents a high portion of the female population which, as result, have been publicly vilified for speaking to their experiences or not protected by law institutions. Sexism justifies and naturalizes misogyny, misogyny is the police-like emitter of violence that maintains the patriarchal order. Much of this misogyny manifests through the enforcement of social roles and labor which, if rebelled against, works to protest her nonappearance, betrayal, or dereliction of constructed duties (14). Manne’s specific use of the dissenter as a nonappearance works exceedingly well with my notion of the “failed woman” in patriarchy. Referring to my writing on Christine Chubbuck, who through a heterosexist framework would be deemed as one of those failures, invisible in this regime, alongside others cast out for their roles such as being a dissenter, a lesbian, or a survivor. Anyone, in other words, who does not adhere to the traditional values of femininity that women are demanded to comply with, may be cast to this nonappearance, or even worse in the case of a public figure, becomes antagonized:

She is morally in the wrong, as measured by the wrong moral standards—namely, his: the moral standards that work to protect historically privileged and powerful men from moral downfall. They also protect him from the ignominy of shame and the corrosive effects of guilt, as well as the social and legal costs of moral condemnation. They enable him to form views and make claims with the default presumption that he is good, right, or correct. And the women morally bound to him may not beg to differ. (15)

Critical to Manne’s argument is misogyny’s invocation of dispositions that may not actively manifest in ways that may immediately flag itself as misogynistic. Like a volcano, misogyny can bubble up underneath and remain dormant. Instead, it may be observed through cementation of regressive gender roles and conformity within patriarchy. This dynamic occurs in the same way that women began, on TikTok during the televised trial, posting videos of themselves reacting to Heard testifying her sexual assault, in which assailant Depp forcibly penetrated her using a broken bottle. Heard, as we recall the frozen stiffness as she dreadfully recalls the affectual and physical violence of an event she does not want to explain so intensely to the world, is visibly distressed. Given the content of the last sentence alone, one can assume that they were horrified and disgusted by what they had heard – something that one in every six American women face in their lives. Oh, no, they were fully aroused by these acts, but specifically these acts being done by none other than the rapist that happens to be a burned-out, 90s teenage-heart-throb himself. According to these women operating as agents for patriarchal order, acts of sadism, torture, and abuse toward women is desirable, and who are we as women if we refuse that treatment?

In Being A Character, Bollas contends that everyone contains a bit of the pathology featured in Fascist movements – even the most progressive are capable of developing this state of mind. Employing the metaphor of a parliamentary order, one that can be taken over by an intense drive or affect that can explode a traditional set of normalities. A defining feature in this development appears through what Bollas notes as an “operation of specific mental mechanisms aimed at eliminating all opposition”; in other words, discourses are immediately terminated in favor of maintaining a dominant ideology (200). Through this elimination of dissent in any capacity, the Fascist mind evolves into an “intellectual genocide,” the specific mechanisms of which Bollas describes in seven stages. While this process is decidedly ordinary within daily life, all the while it is easy to detect, appallingly so when considering the defamation trial: 

The first stage on the way to the fascist state of mind, marked through intellectual genocide, is distortion; it is defined by working to make the victim less credible in their case or dissent, distortion finds itself in moments of debate and can emerge as slander in its most vicious form from the perpetrator. Despite the fact that Heard’s recounts of the abuse have remained consistent since 2016, when she initially filed for divorce from Depp and requested a temporary restraining order, the narrative “suddenly, live!” flipped in the eyes of the public when the defamation trial began. Not only did Heard defame Depp, but she also abused him! How brave of Mr. Depp to come forward with the real story, Heard used the #MeToo narrative to win some extra money from the divorce and deceived the public in the name of feminism. The trial, even though nothing in the original reason for bringing the case to court, changed. Not once did it shift focus to determine that Heard was actually the one responsible for abusing Depp. Interestingly, the case against Heard was brought forth as result of a Washington Post op-ed where she wrote about the treatment of women in intimate partner violence alterations – without ever referencing Depp by name, instead writing how she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out.” This works together with the following stage of Decontextualization. When recontextualization would make the victim and their content more credible, the opposition’s use of decontexualization will increase the difficulty for the victim to draw in the gaps forcibly chiseled out. Bollas notes in extreme versions occurring outside normal aspects of debate, this process requires separating the individual from their home or personal/familial contexts in an attempt to persecute the subject. Heard’s accounts of abuse, and the libel accusation that Depp brought forward against Heard and The Sun in 2020, were disregarded entirely despite the ruling by the United Kingdom’s High Court returning against him in the United States’ trial. The group of jurors, random civilians, despite cases that are this high-profile generally being prohibited from exhuming outside materials or social media influences, were allowed that access despite the very high rate of support of Depp which only manifested through fans constantly harassing and threatening Heard: the abuse they condemned against their beloved Captain Jack Sparrow was being utilized to target his “abuser”.

Denigration: This third stage begins the movement against a specific individual, namely by disparaging their view, to make the victim small and appear pathetic and defenseless. Here is where we begin to consider the specific reactions found throughout social media to the trial, often noted through forms of “live tweeting” it as it aired, in addition to countless TikTok reactions: an app already infamous for its successful methods of spreading misinformation and little-to-no monitoring of the lies. Trends began to circulate, the most popular being audio reactions to Heard’s sexual assault testimony and a moment where she tearfully remembers a moment in which her dog had stepped on a bee. A random detail amidst a day where she was subjected to a “cavity search” by Depp while having to attend to her pet at the veterinarian’s office morphed into a method of degrading and mocking Heard's expressions. The obsession caught social media by storm with even high-profile figures such as the rapper Doja Cat and many large accounts on TikTok. Here is just a light selection of said videos adhering to the trend, using the opportunity to flex their (very dire) sense of humor with rhyming:

“My dad has to pee,” a man says before user Cloeann Hardee sorrowfully says, “I forgot my house key” in a video that has amassed 6.3 million views. “My child spilt my tea,” a woman complains. “Jimmy Savile shagged me,” TikToker Ben Cotton finished the rhyme for his 2.6 million viewers. And a user who goes by Zeusliftsheavy pieced the clip of Heard with a snippet from Queen’s music video for their 1984 single “I Want to Break Free.” The video compilation has gathered 1.8 million views. In another viral video, which has 2.2 million views on the Vinyl Haus account, a virtual bee is seen floating through the air saying, “Amber’s telling lies about me.” (New York Post)

This form of denigration during the process of transforming the fascist state of mind quickly evolves from not only harassment toward the individual and comments tearing apart their character, but further to the act of Caricature. This involves a cartooning of the individual, making their comments appear excessive, sugarcoated, or gregarious. It is not the words said that are causing the issue, rather now blame is turned fully toward the individual representing the opposition. This marks a significant step in intellectual genocide through marking the individual with characteristics deemed deplorable or plague-like to the opposition. Bollas specifically refers here to Susan Sontag’s metaphor of illness representing the opposition that must be cleansed and expelled. I also recall here Foucault’s image of the leper that represents exclusionary characters in a given society. Perhaps this section encapsulates the radical misogyny presented throughout the narrative the public purposefully misconstrued against Heard, and not only through literal caricature drawings such as these, many created for intent of making money off the trial:

Analysis of Heard’s depiction in popular culture, treating this case concerning domestic abuse as sensationalized celebrity entertainment being “overly emotional,” acting hysterical while reciting her memories, with a face covered with crocodile tears feed off of sexist ideologies about women for their ostensibly innate high sensitivity and bodily control by overactive hormones in her ovaries. The idea that females are more susceptible to their emotions ruling their everyday experience is one that has been naturalized in patriarchy, thus making it acceptable to degrade women on this basis. Since this female behavior is “inevitable,” we are justified in caricaturization of Heard’s trauma that Depp's obsessors perceive as an animated state of a self-victimizer.

Character Assassination: following the dynamics used in the prior two levels, this works to completely smear the victim. Their opposition is marked completely as an enemy, and now they turn into an aggressor. Interesting about this stage is Bollas’ note that unlike the prior categories, this way of degrading the victim is not an acceptable form of discourse but rather occurs in informal spaces, appearing often as “gossip,” thus somehow unharmful. The victim is unable to defend themselves entirely. During the course of the trial, critical discourse surrounding the reception of the events was often dismissed in a plethora of ways. Multiple “movies” were made about the trial, designed only to further exploit and sensationalize the story without any direction from the subjects themselves. My mother, whose opinion has since evolved, noted at the time that both Heard and Depp abused one another and were both crazy drug addicts, either way it just reveals how insane celebrity gossip culture is and we mustn't focus on it any further. Her comment is on the milder end that seeks to close conversations about the trial in any capacity, an opinion that was fed to her through popular media pages and news outlets, decontextualized entirely from not only the physical nature of Heard, who when married to Depp, 22 years her senior, was severely anorexic and frail compared to her ex-husband’s meaty stature. This eventually radicalized and unfolded into the commonplace idea that Depp maintained a childlike innocence throughout the entire time they were together. The ways in which Heard’s character was destroyed during the trial is truly insidious, and I recall Cvetkovich’s critiques of patriarchal models of psychology. Hired by Depp’s team and having little prior interactions with Heard, non-Board certified psychologist Dr. Shannon Curry disputed Heard’s claim of having PTSD from the violence endured at the hands of her ex-husband, instead labeling her with Histrionic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, both highlighted by attention seeking behavior. Upon evaluating her framework that makes a person’s diagnosis of PTSD credible, one word (unsurprisingly) comes to mind: narrow. If anything reveals this, it is her comment that those suffering from the illness are rendered unable to go out for a walk. Despite extensive cross examination by her personal therapist, all of which was clearly elaborated upon and displayed in the trial, the masses of Depp supporters flocked to tell only one side of the story. I wish the weaponization of mental illness as observed here against Heard was unique, however this has become a common tactic for abusers to get away with their crimes and find ways to medically evaluate and naturalize the false idea of women’s unreliability with telling the truth, especially when disclosing abuse. Part of the classic system of D.A.R.V.O – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender – that continues to be carried out affecting a large quantity of abuse survivors due to the precedent this trial set. Depp set out to humiliate Heard at her own game, and because of all of the neglect I have recounted here and more got away with it. These wolves in sheep’s clothing, major figures including: Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Jonathan Majors, Brad Pitt, Marilyn Manson, and Tory Lanez took inspiration from Depp’s win and applied it against the women they wish to silence once and for all.

Change of name: the victim’s true name is substituted for another, far more derogatory manner in hopes of eliminating a proper way of reference to the individual. We can imagine this through the use of slurs. It has been noted that often the last word a woman hears before being killed by a male aggressor are epithets such as bitch, whore, slut, and cunt. All these words and more oft repeated themselves when referring to Heard by word of mouth or on social media pages. These are all misogyny-based slurs that are not specific to Heard herself but, again, to anyone who dares to go against the grain of traditional, Evangelical femininity. Thinking of all the times I’ve been referred to as a bitch generally occurs as a result of refusal to comply with something, frankness/honesty (deciphered by males as rudeness or being too domineering or exhibiting traits associated with masculinity). I was particularly appalled to see in my hometown of Las Vegas, a sign from strip club “Little Darlings” that read “AMBER! We HEARD you need to earn $10,000,000! Audition Today!” Of these, the nickname for Heard that became inescapable from the moment you turn on your phone, is “Amber Turd” – in reference to a time in which the trial framed her, instead of her pet that at the time was having bowel issues, as defecating all over Depp’s bed. The name itself obviously does not carry as violent connotations as do the aforementioned slurs, however the nickname was utilized by popular media all for the purpose of not only delegitimizing Heard’s stories of Depp, but herself as a person. If her name is a joke, so is she, thus it is morally okay to spew misogynistic comments toward her, in addition to multiple death threats, stalkings, threats of rape against her and her infant daughter, and other crimes. The onslaught of terror sent Heard’s way forced her to flee the country for safety without being sensationalized during a trip to the park or tossing out the garbage.

The final stage of the subject in their journey toward a fascist state of mind manifests through categorization as aggregation - no longer is it solely the individual dissenters’ problem: now, anyone like the victim is implicated as part of a mass group, anyone belonging here now loses their identity, deemed as one entity. The trial’s position within popular culture and contemporary feminist movements as a precedent supporting abusers and continual abuse toward abuse survivors makes a lot more sense when considering the particular tactics here to speak out against feminism and sex-based violence. The most disheartening of these is through makeup brand Milani and advertising their products through the trial. After the product was shown in court, never referred to by name, only barely seen on the bottle through a gold, cursive logo, it was explained that Heard used their Cosmetics Conceal + Perfect All-in-One Correcting Kit to hide bruises inflicted on her by Depp. In response, the business posted their “take” on TikTok, adding to the “meme-ification” of the trial in its entirety. The incitement of this discourse quickly led to many Depp fans (majority female) looking at physical evidence of bruises on Heard and other women on the internet and denying them entirely, adding that the makeup was also likely doctored to look like bruises and these victims were lying about their injuries, and thus the abuse entirely. 

The fascist state of mind and its mission to annihilate opposition is observed clearly through Depp’s accusations against Heard. This fascism parades itself around without actually drawing attention to our traditional associations of the movement, namely the type in which Mussolini propagated throughout the 20th century. Any voice in support of Heard, whether online or in-person, is vilified entirely with no chance to elaborate on their claim. All conversations on these sites quickly are flooded with accounts behaving as though they are bots, replying to every single post that may include one of the two figures. To test out this theory once more, I asked my followers their opinion on what they found most outrageous about the happenings of the trial in retrospect. Even before those I knew got to reply, I began receiving replies from middle-aged female Depp fans with pirate flags in their display name, a reference to his widely loved pirate character, reiterating all of the lies that have been consistently debunked. From @BooChilling: “If you’re going to lie about such an horrific crime as SA then expect to be mocked. She will forever be a laughing stock for many reasons. Nasty, nasty woman.” @LaLobabailando: “Rape!! In her imagination and hallucinations…” DeppieWarrior, or @DeppieFancy: “The cruelest part of the trial was her trying to hard to get Johnny to look at her eyes so he can face his narcissistic abuser one more time!” Funniest of all, from @GellertDepp – an account with nearly 58,000 followers – like the rest which I have never communicated with once who would have located my original tweet by manually searching for key words having to do with the trial: 

Even if I wanted to defend myself, I would not be able to give that every single account after replying to me additionally blocked me. 

Supporters of Depp have little interest in engaging with opposition, simply aggressively retorting “well, Heard actually abused him!” without concrete evidence, going on to hurl insults at the dissenter or even their publish private information such as home addresses, wading in their own delusion that this alcoholic, drug-addicted man with prior charges of assault toward crewmembers on his film projects is faultless and needs to be protected from Heard’s libelous claims. The nostalgia of these defenders is precisely what causes their complete blindness to the reality of domestic violence. No amount of convincing for those who’ve willingly made their loyalty to Depp triumph all is likely to render effective. In November of 2022, an open letter was released, signed by 130 advocates for women’s rights and survivor rights including Brown, Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, Sara Ahmed, Lindsey Boylan, Judith Herman, and Susan J. Brison that as result of the highly publicized and misogynistic and biphobic trial, the “damaging consequences of the spread of this misinformation are incalculable. We have grave concerns about the rising misuse of defamation suits to threaten and silence survivors” (Amber Heard Open Letter). Despite this letter being desperately needed during the actual timeline of the trial – where the events were at the forefront of everyone’s mind and the abuse against Heard hit an all-time high – it is critical to note simply how many experts in domestic violence, feminism, or psychology, even other survivors note the patterns in which abuse is typically carried out. Nothing proves special in the case of Depp versus Heard beyond their both public personas, the former’s exceedingly more publicly beloved in comparison to the latter. Heard’s image as a result, despite her efforts to work through and beyond her trauma while also advocating for fellow victims of patriarchy’s system that protects abusers, has been transformed into one only associated with her abuser, except she’s the assailant. With great thanks to basic consciousness-raising since the trial and young people who naively believed the misinformation they were confidently presented, there is increasing sympathy sent toward Heard, many apologizing for jumping on this fascistic, misogynistic bandwagon and reflecting on where they went wrong. Opportunities such as these, especially when spread throughout social media, give me a sliver of hope, however the amount of work yet to be done. These women who come to recognize the smear campaign against Amber Heard for what it is may begin to recognize the patterns in which they have been mistreated as result of misogyny throughout their lives. Without that awareness and courage to speak out, despite fears of being ridiculed or degraded, feminism holds little value for the individual and ability to reach out to transform the collective.

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Bibliography

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1992. 

Brown, Laura. “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma.” Trauma: 

Explorations in Memory. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

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Duke University Press, 2003.

Diaz, Adriana. “Amber Heard’s ‘my Dog Stepped on a Bee’ Testimony Mocked on Tiktok.” New 

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nypost.com/2022/05/11/amber-heards-my-dog-stepped-on-a-bee-testimony-mocked-on-tiktok/. 

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www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-seen-how-institutions-protect-men-accused-of-abuse-her

es-what-we-can-do/2018/12/18/71fd876a-02ed-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html. Accessed 2 Feb. 2024. 

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Amber Heard Open Letter. “Experts Support Amber Heard.” Amber Heard Open Letter, 

amberopenletter.com/letter. Accessed 2 Feb. 2024.