Amber Heard & #MeToo - Movements Are Fragile

 

"#MeToo is over if we don't listen to 'imperfect' [alleged] victims like Amber Heard." - Martha Gill, The Guardian, May 22, 2022.

#MeToo had caught fire. We all know that.

The high-profile females who contended they have been "victims" of sexual misconduct were, well, not imperfect.

As they presented their complaints there was no "evidence" that they might have collaborated in what they alleged had happened to them. In addition, they were what we think of as "solid citizens." No, they didn't have to be Saints. Some who had become caught in the alleged sexual abuse by power brokers in media had been quite ambitious. Society remains ambivalent about that trait in females. 

So much for the victims who met the specs for the acceptable victim.

Then came along Amber Heard. Some fear her streaming presence could make #MeToo go poof. In a 2018 The Washington Post op-ed she contended she had been a survivor of domestic abuse. In that piece she didn't mention her former husband Johnny Depp by name.

Nevertheless, he filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit. The result is one of those Trials of the Century which will wrap this week. It's sucking up so much media oxygen. 

Well, Heard is not a solid citizen type. She is been labeled the "imperfect victim."

For example, she said she would donate all her divorce proceeds to charity. That didn't happen.

There is also a recording of her hitting Depp. 

In addition, the skilled lawyers representing Depp from Brown Rudnick are knocking the stuffing out of her on cross-examination as well as through objections. That's so much the situation the BR lawyer Camille Vasquez, although not a partner but an associate, has become a TikTok star.

However, what Gill and others are pushing back with is this: #MeToo was intended to give voice to imperfect victims. They didn't have to fit the traditional stereotype of the Good Girl. 

However movements are fragile. Remember the late 1960s and early 1970s Counterculture? That too caught fire. The severe recession of the mid 1970s essentially ended that Do Your Own Thing ethos. We got it that we had to do what The Man demanded. Some of us even felt that our Counterculture selves had represented excess. 

#MeToo also could be what a society leaves behind. 

Connect with Editor-in-Chief Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

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