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Amber Heard is not an abuser. Amber Heard is a defiant victim who lashed out when the abuse from Johnny Depp hit a point she could no longer be passive in. Her lack of payment to a charity doesn& #39;t make that less true.
A defiant victim is someone who attacked an abuser during a cycle as a way to have some control over the abuse.
Imperfect victims regularly fall into the defiant status. Imagine you know you& #39;re in an abusive relationship and the only way to exert any power in the situation is to hit your abuser first because you know the cycle is coming.
"but amber didn& #39;t give her settlement money to that charity."
That is 100% something to be angry about that is 0% about whether or not Amber is a defiant victim. She can be an asshole who doesn& #39;t send money where she promises and ALSO a victim.
That is 100% something to be angry about that is 0% about whether or not Amber is a defiant victim. She can be an asshole who doesn& #39;t send money where she promises and ALSO a victim.
But she is NOT the abuser simply because there is any proof that she berated/hit/attacked Jonny Depp during their relationship. From what I& #39;ve seen, Amber only ever physically attacked Johnny when he was threatening.
Threatening to fuck someone up AFTER they& #39;ve threatened to fuck you up isn& #39;t abuse. Following through by throwing a punch AFTER those threats is NOT abuse.
Not paying the charity you promised to send money to is NOT abuse. Dragging on court dates and hearings over and over and over again? THAT& #39;s abuse.
You can be an asshole who doesn& #39;t give money to a charity and ALSO be an abuse survivor. The need by the public for all survivors to be pure and good is an issue with the public, not the survivor.
"Gayle, you don& #39;t know shit."
I am a defiant survivor from long before I ever knew what that meant. I knew what was done to me was wrong and got mad. And then I got physically and emotionally violent. Because that was the power I had.
I am a defiant survivor from long before I ever knew what that meant. I knew what was done to me was wrong and got mad. And then I got physically and emotionally violent. Because that was the power I had.
I have also learned through therapy that these reactions are not healthy. Lundy Bancroft--who co-created an entire program for emotional/physical abusers that actually teaches abusers to see how they& #39;re wrong--talks in depth on these things.
"Why Does He Do That?" is an entire book about understanding how even defiant abuse survivors are not wrong in their defiance while also explaining how abusers do not learn from basic therapy tools.
Abusers MUST be in a program that knows how to focus on how THEIR BEHAVIOR IS WRONG. All other programs simply give abusers tools to trick victims into thinking their response is the problem.
Amber Heard getting physically violent against Johnny Depp when he had been violent and unapologetic against her is not about Amber Heard being an abuser. It& #39;s about Amber realizing the only power she had was to speak Johnny& #39;s abusive language.
Amber not handing over her settlement money to the orgs she promised isn& #39;t proof she was secretly the abuser. It& #39;s proof that she didn& #39;t pay out to that charity. But we need to focus on that failure.
Equating Amber Heard to an abuser because she decided to set off an abuser so it was over with and didn& #39;t pay out what she promised is not the same as Johnny Depp being an abuser.
BUT. Amber being a defiant survivor makes it harder for a lot of people to understand she& #39;s a victim because defiance required her to be physically and emotionally violent to her abuser.
And this isn& #39;t the fault of Amber OR the people who are confused. Because the fault lies on overall media coverage where the abused is silent and violated versus the abused being violated and knowing that the only way to deal with shit is to set up the next violation.
Imagine you have someone in your life who screams at you. And you know they& #39;re gonna eventually scream at you again. But it& #39;s not a regular enough thing to schedule. Except that they get stressed enough to scream at you.
If you know they need to get stressed, and you& #39;re getting stressed out waiting for them, you need to relieve the stress.
So. You make a decision. If stress is the trigger, you& #39;ll be the stress. Rather than wait and try to calm the person, you push all the buttons. You push the buttons, and you wait.
And, after you push the buttons, that person flips their shit. Because they were WAITING to flip their shit. And you knew that and set it off so it was FUCKING DONE.
"But, Gayle, no one else came forward and said Johnny abused them."
Abusers don& #39;t abuse every person around them. That& #39;s how they get away with it. And you have to consider that people may not see they& #39;ve been abused. Because that& #39;s part of it, too.
Abusers don& #39;t abuse every person around them. That& #39;s how they get away with it. And you have to consider that people may not see they& #39;ve been abused. Because that& #39;s part of it, too.
It& #39;s very possible there are people in Johnny& #39;s life who weren& #39;t hit or threatened in the same way and think they haven& #39;t been abused because Amber& #39;s story isn& #39;t the same as theirs.
It doesn& #39;t mean Amber is lying, and it doesn& #39;t mean those people are lying. It& #39;s simply how it is. Abuse has ALWAYS been about interpreting the ways you& #39;re treated in the time you exist in that relationship.
For example, I am sure one of my exes would NEVER consider his treatment of me abusive. But he also shut me out on several occasions because he felt betrayed because I had other people I trusted emotionally.
And after the THIRD time I realized he was emotionally untrustworthy, he approached me and treated me like NOTHING was wrong when I was VERY AWARE that things were wrong.
and I called him at least 19 times the night of the moment he suddenly talked to me like he hadn& #39;t frozen me out, and he framed it as ME being crazy.
Should I have called him 19 times in a row? Of fucking course not. That& #39;s fucking weird. Should he guilt me for it after he& #39;d spoken to me like nothing was wrong? ALSO NO.
And when we talked, was the focus on how much I called him? Nope. It was on how much--from his perspective--I had FAILED him. I& #39;d broken up with him. I& #39;d attempted to have a platonic friendship. I was wrong for being mad that he didn& #39;t want a platonic friendship.
I thought a platonic friendship was fine because HE HAD NEVER TOLD ME OTHERWISE. But at this moment in the conversation? I was wrong for attempting to reach a goal I had literally never been told was wrong.
the last time we& #39;d talked in depth, he& #39;d said that my being was Sean was weird because "What does Sean have that I don& #39;t," and I answered him honestly: "Nothing, but I don& #39;t want to date you."
Not an easy truth, but an unquestionable one. I had, in fact, provided my ex with several explanations about why I didn& #39;t want to date him again way before Sean and I got together. He never listened.
In our final phone call, he revealed a lot. Like how he& #39;d never told his current gf about me in detail bc he feared she& #39;d say something negative about me (and it was clearly implied it was my fault if she did)
And also that he saw no reason to be my friend when we couldn& #39;t be romantic and/or fuck.
I ended the call by telling him I hope he enjoyed his emotionally fucking stunted life. I feel no remorse for that.
I bring it up because if you& #39;ve read these last few tweets and think I was in the right, then go back and sit with how my response is any different from Amber Heard& #39;s.
Because I have ALWAYS been a defiant survivor when dealing with an abuser, and I will never, ever apologize for that. My ex is a minor example. I can provide major ones.
The point is, if you see my story here and think I& #39;m in the right but you look above and think Amber is in the wrong, the problem isn& #39;t with me or with Amber. It& #39;s with you.
Amber not turning over that money is shitty. But that& #39;s separate from her unquestionable abuse.
