Picking Sides...

So one blog in April. Considering how busy April was I'm taking that as a win. Trying to settle into a new routine here at the new house, it won't happen until next week, but I've got a plan. 

This is actually one of the best times to form a new habit. Any time you break your standing routine it's a good opportunity to sub in a new one. Try it. You don't have to wait until you move house, you can do it if you are on vacation, or if you have to get up at a different time for a stretch, anything that breaks you out of your normal routine. Want to floss more? When you go on vacation, pack your floss and make sure you do it every night before bed, or first thing in the morning, but either way it will be easier to set up a new routine when your old one is busted. For me I am going to set up a new schedule for my daily routine and make sure I block in writing time again. 

Next week. Today is just bonus because I want to write about something that is bugging me right now and get it out of my head.

How do you choose sides? I don't mean in the big things where there is clearly a right and a wrong for your own moral code, but in random things that come up. People tend to choose sides no matter the situation and sometimes I wonder why that choice is made. 

Right now the celebrity gossip is all caught up in the Depp/Heard trial. She wrote an op-ed, he says it damaged his career. He's suing. They are both testifying and the internet world has taken sides. Or mainly side. Like the majority of what you see is that she's awful and he's been defamed and isn't it terrible what's happened to him?

There is the take that her claiming he abused her sets back actual abused people. But why though? Even if she is lying why would her lie damage everyone else? I mean I have a theory and I'll circle back to it. 

There is the take that we need to pay more attention to the fact that men can be abused too. And that is absolutely true. Men can and are the victims of abuse. The stats are more heavily tilted toward men being abusers (of their partners no matter the gender) but you do have cases where women abuse men and the men don't report because of the stigma. The patriarchy hurts everyone. 

There is the take that she should be drowned then burned then fucked. (that one from Mr. Depp himself.) He says it's from Monty Python, with the fucked part added for extra color I guess?

But I don't understand why the majority of people seem to take his side over hers? From what I've read she isn't great, don't get me wrong, but that doesn't make him an angel. They seemed to feed off of each other's particular form of toxicity and escalate.

I mean, he says that he would drink to blackout at times. But then claims that he knows he never hit her when he was blackout drunk. He also says that any injuries she had were self inflicted, which matches with what he said about the crew member who sued him for attacking him during a drunken rage. He also says that her article is what led to him losing parts and damaging his reputation, but in cross examination it was pointed out that there have been articles about his drunken bad behavior since well before he and Heard ever got together. But all of those were hit pieces as well. According to Depp.

But none of that has swayed the DeppStans. They are sure that he is an innocent lamb abused and maligned by that evil witch Amber Heard. 

Why?

How do you choose sides?

Is it because we have "known" Depp longer? He was Gen X's poster boy for gorgeous weirdo. 21 Jump Street to Edward Scissor Hands to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to being able to take our kids to the Pirates movies (the first one at least, even you Stans have to admit the law of diminishing returns on that series set in quickly). We feel like we know this man. 

But we don't. 

We do know that he's an addict. He admits that. And addiction is a nasty disease. Anyone who is an addict or has loved and addict can testify to how personalities change between sober and impaired. I mean, I am a mean drunk. MEAN drunk. Or at least I was. I might not be anymore because I stopped getting drunk a long time ago. Because it makes me mean. So Depp could very well be a mean drunk, and it appears that he was. Doesn't make him a bad person overall, but it does mean that he is a mean drunk.

We also know that he's had a reputation in Hollywood for years for problems with his addiction. Jennifer Gray is releasing her book right now and she touches on her engagement to Depp. She talks about how he was jealous and possessive. Now, that was years ago. People often grow out of behavior like that, but it is another point on the line that he isn't perfect.

But we don't expect him to be right? I mean he can be deeply deeply flawed and still have been a victim. He can be an addict with blackout issues and still have been abused and mistreated. He can have punched one person and not another. He doesn't have to be perfect to believe him.

But she does.

She isn't a good enough victim. She fought back. She was mean. She wasn't passive. She didn't simper in a corner wait for him to sober up. She, for all the stories if we believe him, was really unpleasant. And somehow that means that not only is she not able to be a victim but NO OTHER WOMAN is as well. Or at least it sure makes it hard for "real" victims to speak up. You know, the ones that don't fight back, the ones that passively take the beating, the ones that tell the world it's fine, he's lovely, you just don't know him the way I do. Those victims. The real ones. 

We have a vision in our minds about what a victim looks like. And she doesn't fit that vision. So we discount what she says and we decide that it also damages other victims. The real ones. Which is such bullshit. Even if it comes out that she was the only one in the wrong, that he was the innocent lamb his lawyers and his Stans would like you to believe, that doesn't mean jack shit for anyone else. 

This is why we have a culture that needs a hashtag Believe Women. Because we don't. Not really. If they don't fit the perfect victim mode we dismiss. If the man they are accusing says he didn't do it we tend to side with the man. We have a balancing point of how many victims have to come forward in the case of serial abusers. Too few and it's probably not true, too many and they are just out for money or fame.

If someone tells you they have been abused believe them until you have reason not to. But the reason should be more than "he says he didn't do it."

It puzzles me how people take sides. What they use to weigh in on that judgement.

I think the truth probably is that they were both really damaged individuals whose particular form of damage triggered an escalating response in each other. It was a bad relationship. And you don't have to take my guess on that, you can take the testimony from their marriage counselor. The one that did know both of them. That did hear both sides. And that weighed in that they were both toxic and abusive. 

They can both be awful people. Or at least awful to each other. No sides needed.