#wetoo

The whole Depp vs Heard debacle worries me.

 Not that Depp won. I’m happy for him, if (and I am fairly confident) what has been said is the truth.

What worries me is the whole media coverage and people’s reactions to them.

That the media circus completely cheapens the whole discussion around domestic violence.

First of all, trial by media. I am pretty curious how the media coverage is being financed…I do not think that either party get anything for getting something so personal paraded all over the world.

Secondly, speaking of being paraded.

I insist this should have been a personal affair.

The moment either party agreed to have their thing slapped all over the internet, they suddenly became two standards behind which two deeply problematic camps, the likes of #metoo and #mentoo, have used either as their flagship, and this affair as their battleground.

Neither has disassociated themselves from either camp. On the other hand, Amber encouraged her face to be the face of #metoo.

For the uninitiated, #metoo was the online movement promoting the awareness and takedown of violence against women and the promotion of women’s rights. This, by itself, is a wonderful idea…until they started going all Amazon and a large number of them saw men and the patriarchy as “the enemy” and themselves as the absolute virgin victim in all circumstances. Complexity be damned. This triggered the natural response in #mentoo, of whom most kicked back in promoting awareness for sexual violence on men and men’s rights and so forth. The problem is a large number of them went all misogynistic and even banalized #metoo’s original intent by claiming that the men they were taking down and even possibly canceling were the real victims. Again, complexity be damned

Enter Depp vs Heard, and as explained earlier, either side’s accusation of the other of abuse became the rallying point for these two deeply problematic camps. And very, very sadly, the maggots came crawling out of the woodwork and infested the media.

And suddenly, the whole charade became a football match seeking to get more followers around them, where two human beings were made the vessels of outside problematic causes.

And it became US vs THEM. Not Depp Vs Heard. US vs THEM.

Let me repeat that. TWO HUMAN BEINGS WERE MADE INTO VESSELS. COMMODITIES. FOR OUTSIDE CAUSES AND THEIR FOLLOWERS.

You can see my problem here.

Whether it was consensual or not, the fact that the people overseas up and accepted to feed into this debacle is rot to our society. They made a deeply personal, tragic event into a monolith representing ALL cases of domestic violence.

And most people are acting like it is.

There are signs that this will trigger an inevitable backlash. Suddenly, the whole discussion around domestic violence will now be viewed through this lens as much as it had through the lens of the #metoo movement, robbing all nuance and context of each case because that is how we do, clearly.

This should not about “justice for men” or “justice for women”, or whataboutism; but a fight for a  view of justice without bias and one that empowers victims to seek help and make a change. A system that encourages victimhood is an abusive system, even not explicitly. Against one who has an idealized vision of manhood that is virile and overpowering and actually gives a damn if a report is made by either. From my experience, this screams of systematic problems in filing a report for domestic violence, especially locally, where authorities both actively discourage chasing the report further both consciously and systematically by putting demographics at a disadvantage due to ludicrous costs of getting things moving if they do at all, and law enforcement officers not willing to pursue or get involved. And that is without going into issues of unhelpfulness within the “mechanisms” in place to help as stated elsewhere, as if an abuser is willing to submit themselves willingly for rehabilitation and acknowledge themselves as such, particularly in the case of a narcissist.    We all know that the justice system sadly is not simply decided on evidence and so forth, and miscarriage of justice is not unheard of either, especially in the quality of the lawyers hired as well, if they can be afforded at all.

I understand strong feelings as those of others here present because their own context and odds are they are justified. But having had my own context, I find how boiling this down to symbolic monoliths like either this trial, the #mentoo OR the #metoo movement is dangerous. People are already rallying behind simplistic and monolithic arguments and maintaining their “us vs them” mentality, instead of thinking rationally.

I hold on to the fact that how it was given too much importance than it should have undermined the whole argument around domestic violence. Not that Depp won, I am as happy for him that justice was served (hopefully and I am confident that rightfully) but the fact that it was a circus that became a symbolic battleground rather than a private affair of a tragic turn to a relationship between two human beings.

That is solved by systematic change. And a shift in public mentality that 1.) victimhood does not automatically equate to virgin sainthood (2) a more human vision of masculinity rather than an idealized token of virility and outdated stiff upper lip and (3.) situations such as these must be handled both privately AND, more importantly, free of bias between one or the other party.

The role of the public should not be taking sides or taking a verdict, but to help rehabilitate either. To help in both becoming the best version they could be of themselves. Even the victim should be rehabilitated to ensure they do not become perpetrators themselves or fall into another similar situation because they do not know better, as stated elsewhere.

But this is not where it is heading, now, is it? Or maybe it is me being negative and feeding into what the algorithm feeds me.