Depp and Heard again - #believeallwomen and the hypocrisy of reporting

I know. It is a bit tiring to talk about these two: this mess of a trial did bring out a lot of dirty laundry apart from the whole domestic violence issue which makes you really re-evaluate what you feel about the rich and privileged. In short: not good. They are frankly disgusting, and it is obscene how much money they waste on menial, stupid things. But bear with me; this Depp vs Heard situation is a perfect demonstration of what is wrong with today's so-called progressives.

Variety came out with an article discussing whether Depp's career survives this trial, and there were a couple of issues I could not help but notice.

Let's forget the fact that the author only took look at this mess from one perspective: Amber Heard's. We can't even entertain the notion that perhaps Depp may be innocent, and the woman is lying. In fact, all the people who are quoted are staunchly on the side of Heard.

But the real interesting part comes when Allred is quoted. You know, when people say #believeinallwomen was never about believing whatever women said? Well, this is what Allred has to say about this

“I look forward to the day where it doesn’t take 10 or 20 women for one women to be believed, but I’m still not sure if that’s going to be enough,” Allred says. “We’ll have to see how far we’ve really come in 2020. As much as we think we’re progressive, culturally, there is still a lot of bias against women – especially if she makes any accusation against a man, and especially if that man is a celebrity.”

So I guess no. It does mean that progress is when a woman accuses someone we automatically believe her, no trial necessary.

This is an interesting take in light of all the insistences to the contrary; I suspect this really is what these progressive fourth wave feminists truly believe. (But now desperately deny. Allred did not get the memo, apparently.)

The article is problematic from another angle as well. Nowhere is it discussed that Depp lost tremendous amount of money and a lot of opportunities due to mere accusations, had petitions to cancel his contract as a Dior celebrity, and overall his reputation took a deep dive, while Heard is still a Human Rights Champion for the Stand Up for Human Rights campaign by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ambassador, and also is a L'Oreal spokesperson.

The sheer double standards of this does not occur for the author. It seems like the media is creating a reality independent of facts -a reality, that is more real than facts are, nevertheless. 

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, the issue of domestic violence, and the motte-and-bailey fallacy at work

It is interesting how even the wokest papers change their tones without acknowledging how they jumped the gun in the past.

It seems like in the Depp-Heard soap opera it was the woman who was abusive, not the man -hardly the stereotype The Guardian likes to discuss, but something unsurprising if you read a little bit about domestic violence in peer reviewed papers.

In the past they were quite happy to condemn Depp as a wife-beater based on hearsay. (There are a lot of articles which take his guilt -or any other men's guilt in domestic violence or rape cases- as a fact; you can search for them for your heart's desire. Start with Mattess Girl if you want to see something really surreal -and people are still defending her.)

#Believeallwomen, right? Oh, wait, now it is a right-wing trap. We never said that. Exept we still do… And yes, I do understand that a couple of people's statements cannot be used to indict a whole group -fourth wave feminists, in this case- except if the group in question does not actually stand up against these individuals. When that does not happen you may start to think that these statements do reflect on the group as a whole. Normally the most vocal fourth wave feminists do not actually disavow outrageous statements made in the name of feminism.

 

It is the perfect example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy: make an outrageous, indefensible claim, and then fall back to an uncontroversial one, claiming you never thought otherwise. (This is when the whole "we did not say that, and we are not responsible for what others have said" routine comes into play.)

The truth remains: somehow lately the Guardian talks about how difficult it is to determine who is telling the truth in these cases (when it is not blaming the victim, of course), while, as mentioned, they were quite ready to declare guilt previously based on hearsay. It is unfortunate for the paper that in this particular case it is really not that hard to determine potential guilt from the evidence presented... it is not merely he-said-she-said: Depp has testimonies, CCTV evidence and doctor's statements at his disposal, and Heard seemed to be quite irrational during her testimonies, going as far as to seemingly fabricating stories of past abuse by Depp.

Now that the evidence is weighted against Heard, now it is suddenly difficult to determine who the guilty party is. Now we do not believe the victim (Depp in this case), possibly because he has a penis and we only believe what women say, since women, as we all know, never lie about these matters. (They do not lie especially when they have something to gain from lying as we know, for example during divorce proceedings… Women are like that. Honest to the fault.) The same thing was going on in the Hungarian News portal, Index.hu. From the absolute certainly of Depp's guilt we arrived to the "well, they both are abusers, it was a toxic relationship" in a couple of weeks. The narrative changes subtly but the overall message does not.

Nice. I guess we can count this as progress.