Words can harm or heal
Somewhere in the world, there are two people that I do not know. I cannot see what they are doing, and I do not know what they were doing before, or what they will do after that. That’s the nature of life – we do not know the facts of something we did not witness and can only surmise from what we are told to come to some kind of a conclusion.
I have not been following the Depp-Heard case in America. I do not need to – I cannot escape it on social and popular media. We can never know exactly what happened that led to this defamation case. What I do know is that whatever the facts, whatever the outcome, Depp is in an enormous position of power over Heard – older, richer, more powerful, more famous and more liked. Most of the public have played jury by proxy – and Heard is already guilty.
I wrote this not to debate her innocence (or his), but to draw attention to a sick undercurrent we have in New Zealand – and probably a good part of the world. We have some of the worst family violence stats in the world – many people are appalled at this fact, but do not know why, or what to do about it. Many times, I have read comments on Facebook or other social media that proclaim Heard to be an evil, abusive woman and that essentially, she needs to rot in hell. Taking away for a moment, the fact that you can never know all of the facts, this tone is partly why we have the intimate partner violence problem we do.
For hundreds of years, men have asserted control over women. Even as recent as the late 80’s, it was legal in New Zealand for a man to rape his wife. Gender based violence is being perpetuated by our misogyny, cultural values, norms and beliefs that have supported violence against women and even condoned it at times through male entitlement, allocated labour and leadership roles – all of which are heavily biased towards males and often, completely unquestioned and invisible. Like water to a fish. Even many women unquestioningly accept this – like an ivy being trained to grow up a wall, only ever seeking what is on the surface, what we can see, when the undercurrent is giving us no other way to consider how things could be different – do you ever question the direction a powerful river flows?
In Western civilisation, the media has played an enormous part towards the cultural forces of how we evaluate women and their legitimacy. Sexual assault myths that include how the victim is a “devious woman” presumed as being promiscuous, it being their fault, wanting the rape, lying about the rape or tempting the rapist, is something that runs deep as an undercurrent when the public are assessing if a victim is worthy or unworthy. These myths and assumptions are partly responsible for our very low conviction rate of sexual assault perpetrators. On the flip side, a woman can only be a “worthy” victim if she is beautiful, straight, white, obedient, submissive, delicate, forgiving, and compliant. These philosophies are ingrained over hundreds of years and any divergence is seen as a deviation from being a victim worthy of help, support and of being believed.
A lot is being bandied around about “toxic femininity” as if it is being offered up as an alternative to toxic masculinity. Maybe there is such a thing but think about this: toxic femininity is about personal traits that are frequently unlikeable and antisocial, conversely, toxic masculinity is often associated with violence, sexual assault and sometimes murder. Imagine for a moment that every intimate partner violence trial where the man is the perpetrator (far more common) is roasted publicly, scrutinised and called out with utter hatred and vitriol – the same as is being directed at Heard (and a few of our female politicians at the moment). I wonder if our gendered violence statistics would reduce? Probably. The power of the media and of a large public voice absolutely has the ability to change the way we view and accept family violence. Or the way that we don’t. I live in hope.