The Women We Won’t Protect
Trigger Warning: discussions of abuse and sexual assault
Over the last two years, I’ve only deleted one blog post on this website. It was published in September of 2021, around the time sections of the Internet were excitedly disseminating claims that Trisha Paytas lied about being molested by a teacher in the 6th grade. Following the catastrophic break-up of Trisha Paytas and her best “frenemy,” Ethan Klein of H3 Productions, those who witnessed the end of the Frenemies podcast and all its fallout were primed to be weary of Trisha’s claims. Just two days after the podcast’s dramatic last episode, a TikTok account called “ContradictionsOfTrish” uploaded their first of many videos compiling moments in which Trisha was caught lying or contradicting herself throughout her 15 years on YouTube.
Trisha’s career as an Internet personality has always involved a fair amount of controversy as a so-called “troll,” endorsing Mitt Romney and Donald Trump for President, rapping the N-word, and creating an offensive persona as a Japanese popstar named Trishii, among other things. Her brief time working with the H3 crew allowed Trisha a redemption arc as a changed, growingly woke public figure, which backfired once she left the Frenemies podcast and added Ethan Klein to her long list of unambiguous enemies.
Months later, Ethan announced on Twitter that he had unlisted an episode of Frenemies in which Trisha named the teacher she alleged molested her along with disproven claims that the teacher had been arrested for child pornography. Trisha now insists she was misinformed about the arrest but maintains that the sexual abuse did occur. In his Twitter statement, Ethan wrote,
“Because of the nature of these claims against this specific teacher, and the stress it’s causing to his family, I have decided to unlist the episode for now until Trisha can further illuminate the situation. I want to emphasize that I do not believe that Trisha would lie about something like this, so I want to give her the opportunity to clarify. But in the meantime, because the teacher has passed on and cannot defend himself, I feel obligated to remove it for now.”
A popular post on the H3 subreddit at the time was titled, “Trisha lied about being SA’d by her teacher, and there is 100% proof!” The 100% proof came from a YouTube video uploaded by a channel called Mysterious. My now-deleted post from September of 2021 was in response to that video, which I had watched gain traction and acclaim across YouTube and social media despite some glaringly problematic analysis of Trisha’s so-called “lies.”
I wasn’t a fan of the video, but I didn’t delete the post because I disagreed with anything I wrote in it. On the contrary, the biggest problem with the post was that it was sloppy and unorganized, a natural outcome as I struggled to tolerate the baseless speculation being passed around as “100% proof.”
Mysterious’s video was the central source folks offered to assert that Trisha’s allegations were false, but the video isn’t specifically about Trisha’s allegations against her former teacher. It’s a take-down piece for Trisha Paytas as a person, titled “Trisha Paytas This is NOT Ok || The DARK Side of Trisha Paytas EP: 1 Part 2,” where all the “lies” of Trisha’s career are the lead-up to invalidate claims of her alleged assault.
Trisha being an untrustworthy person and habitual liar is a fair reason to be skeptical of her story. A pattern of dishonesty is certainly a piece of evidence supporting the assertion that Trisha was not molested by her teacher. It is not, however, “100% proof” as the aforementioned Reddit user along with many anti-Trisha commenters have claimed.
While there are many documented instances in which Trisha was caught distorting information or outright lying, much of the evidence Mysterious provides in her video is purely speculative and astoundingly uncharitable. For instance, in an episode of the Frenemies podcast, Trisha told Ethan about her experience developing breasts prematurely, saying she was sent home from school at age six once for not wearing a bra. Mysterious doubts this claim because she, herself, would “lose [her] shit on the school” if they ever spoke to her child that way, so “common sense” implies that Trisha’s mom would automatically feel the same (despite Mysterious already making many allegations that imply Trisha’s mom is an awful parent). The fact that Trisha’s story didn’t include a scenario in which her mom cussed-out the school’s principal is enough to label the apparent memory as a “clear-cut lie.”
The “proof” against Trisha’s allegation of molestation is even more primitive. Trisha did once have videos on her channel in which she discussed attempts to seduce her teachers, only to have her advances turned down. She also expressed appreciation for her teachers, even once trying to visit them after graduation in a years-old vlog, and admitted to dressing provocatively for attention throughout her childhood and adolescence.
In this post-#MeToo world, I’m legitimately disturbed by the number of people who seem to think all of this is proof of an alleged victim’s lie rather than evidence of deep-seated trauma. Especially for instances of abuse inflicted upon the developing, impressionable brain of a child, it often takes a long time for victims to fully process what’s happened to them. Trisha speaking highly of her teachers in the past, or emphasizing that none of her teachers succumbed to her alleged advances, doesn’t contradict her current accusations. Denial fits into the narrative of many childhood assault survivors.
The frustrating thing is, I think a lot of the people who adamantly held that Trisha made up the story of her assault know all of this. Much of the evidence against Trisha would be labeled as ignorant, victim-blaming nonsense by most reasonable people in a case with a more likeable alleged victim. But people crave the opportunity to call Trisha Paytas a liar. Considering how often she lies, that’s an understandable reflex, but perpetuating rhetoric that undermines a progressive understanding of how trauma can manifest is bad all the time, even when the target of that rhetoric is someone you don’t like.
In many ways, our society has progressed past the blatant misogyny of decades prior. The slut-shaming women like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton experienced in the early 2000s would likely not happen today. It’s become increasingly clear, though, that even many of those who call themselves progressive or feminist have not fully eliminated their desire to participate in the gleeful act of demeaning powerful women. Contempt for the marginalized is embedded into Western society’s ableist, sexist, and racist culture. Maybe one day we’ll successfully rid our world of bigotry and injustice; until then, we’ll just make our implicit biases less noticeable through increasingly complex rationalizations.
There wasn’t a whole lot of evidence that Trisha Paytas lied about being assaulted by her teacher other than the general attitude that Trisha is someone to be skeptical of. In most cases of sexual assault or abuse, the only people who will ever know what happened are the abuser and victim alone. Those acting as if Trisha’s allegations were obviously fabricated weren’t parsing evidence of any one claim, they were building a profile of someone who should just never be believed or treated with compassion. Though Trisha publicly identifies as non-binary (they use she/her and they/them pronouns; I decided to use “she/her” in this post to avoid confusion since those are the pronouns a vast majority of the public uses with Trisha), the enthusiasm with which audiences latched onto arguments undermining her victimhood felt reminiscent of how the general public used to malign any woman’s account of abuse.
If Trisha did lie about being molested, onlookers would be wise to acknowledge that compulsively fabricating stories of horrific abuse is not the behavior of a mentally stable individual. Trisha has demonstrated herself to be mentally ill throughout her online career and shows more signs of being actually delusional (meaning she very well may believe every false story she’s told) rather than evil. Compiling all her most selfish actions, however, gives viewers a great excuse to be outwardly hateful toward a stranger. After all, who’s going to come to the defense of someone who’s had such a harmful presence on the Internet in so many other ways? I’m certainly not eager to do it.
This phenomenon happens all the time on social media. The discovery of a woman’s problematic past doesn’t just set her up to be denounced for what she’s done, it kick-starts a sort of celebration for her downfall.
Amy Schumer has made many gross and insensitive remarks throughout her career as a comedian. Some of her jokes are genuinely horrible, but I can’t say they’re significantly worse than many of those told by her male counterparts (Amy’s also been accused of stealing material, as have plenty of other successful comedians). It’s hard to say that Amy has done anything egregiously wrong relative to what society’s been letting other performers get away with for years, and yet every time she attends an event, my timeline gets flooded with Tweets of users eager to jump aboard the Amy Schumer hate-train.
Hostility toward Amy is so severe that a pretty standard bit she did at this year’s Oscars sparked enough outrage for her to receive death threats purportedly in defense of the joke’s feigned target, Kirsten Dunst. Kirsten had agreed to the bit prior which should have been obvious to anyone that knows how award shows work, but the Internet will take any excuse to paint Amy Schumer as a villain. (Was the bit funny in the first place? Of course not, it was at the Oscars.)
While Amy hasn’t been “cancelled” in such a way that she’s lost all job opportunities (she was co-hosting this year’s Oscars, for instance), her reputation has been so thoroughly squashed by millennials that she seemingly can’t exist in the public sphere without being treated as a walking punching bag for the self-righteous.
Like with Trisha Paytas, though, who really wants to step up and defend someone that isn’t always worth liking?
At least Amy Schumer is being mocked for her comedy and occasionally her wardrobe. When a scorned woman comes out as a victim of domestic abuse, even evidence against their abuser can’t stop the public from reveling in their ridicule.
The dispute already being called the “trial of the century” finally ended today. Clips of depositions from a Virginia courtroom dominated social media feeds for weeks. The trial, which was broadcast live for millions of viewers, lasted a bit over a month, yet the lead-up was years in the making.
In 2016, actress Amber Heard filed for divorce against her then-husband and fellow actor Johnny Depp. Days later, she petitioned for a restraining order against her ex, alleging he had been physically and verbally abusive during their marriage as a result of his heavy drug and alcohol usage. Photos of a seemingly bruised Amber hit the Internet shortly after, her injuries allegedly caused by a violent outburst from Johnny two days before she’d filed for divorce.
Representatives for Johnny Depp denied allegations of abuse, saying his ex-wife was “attempting to secure a premature financial resolution” in their split. Amber dropped the request for a restraining order before being awarded a $7 million settlement in the couple’s divorce. The two then released a joint statement, saying “Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gain. There was never any intent of physical or emotional harm."
While that statement seemingly refutes the claim that Amber Heard lied about being abused, when she released an op-ed for The Washington Post entitled, “I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change,” written in collaboration with the ACLU, Johnny Depp filed a lawsuit against her for $50 million in 2018, claiming the article was defamatory. The suit came down to two lines of supposed libel: “I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture's wrath for women who speak out,” and “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” Neither sentence mentioned Johnny Depp by name, nor did it contain specific details about the former pair’s relationship.
Along with his suit against Amber, Johnny also filed a lawsuit against the British tabloid The Sun for referring to him as a “wife-beater.” Amber supplied evidence to the court in defense of The Sun, prompting the case’s adjudicator to conclude that at least 12 out of 14 instances of Johnny’s alleged abuse were proven to be true by the civil standard, saying Amber feared for her life in their relationship. He was indeed, the court decided, a wife-beater.
The lawsuit against Amber began in April of this year, with Johnny’s claim being that Amber was not a victim of abuse but an abuser herself. He was the real victim.
What unfolded from there was a chaotic mess of allegations featuring so many depositions one could easily forget that this was a defamation case, not a criminal trial. Both Amber and Johnny accused the other of physical and emotional violence and both appeared to be truthful in at least some of their accusations. Johnny’s team played an audio recording of Amber admitting to hitting Johnny. Amber alleged various violent attacks against her and visible injuries which witnesses corroborated.
Abusive relationships require a disparity in power within a pair’s dynamic and it’s hard to say which of the two maintained the upper-hand steadily throughout their romance. Johnny Depp certainly had more power in his and Amber’s shared industry and he’s significantly older than her, but there’s enough evidence of Amber acting in malice that it’s not unreasonable to wonder if her temper was just as, if not more volatile than her partner’s.
Considering how male victims of abuse are so easily dismissed in our culture, many of those who took on the #JusticeForJohnny cause were participating in the cultural discourse with admiral intentions. Skepticism of Amber Heard was not totally unwarranted given her apparent toxicity within the relationship (defenders of Amber will say that she was merely reacting to the abuse that Johnny incited; that’s an absolute possibility, but evidence of Amber’s violence is still reasonably compelling to some).
Unsurprisingly, though, reasoned arguments against Amber’s claims of victimhood were used as justifications for a campaign full of victim-shaming rhetoric and pure misogyny. A forensic psychologist hired by Johnny’s legal team diagnosed Amber with borderline and histrionic personality disorder, something the Internet ate up as proof of Amber’s lies, overlooking that 1) personality disorders typically take months of regular sessions to diagnose accurately, meaning a forensic diagnosis that takes place over a few hours can be extremely unreliable, and 2) having borderline or histrionic personality disorder doesn’t prevent someone from being a victim of abuse. Mental health stigma gives viewers another reason to distrust Amber, even if her alleged mental illness isn’t evidence of any specific crime.
Proving that Amber Heard is a bad person overall became an important aspect of Johnny Depp’s legal strategy. One headline that floated around the Internet was the claim that Amber failed to donate the full amount she’d promised to the ACLU, a fact that’s both misleading in its presentation and completely irrelevant to whether or not she was the victim of abuse.
Internet commenters as well invoked the pseudo-psychology of “body language analysis” to conclude that Amber’s physical presentation doesn’t match that of a true victim.
The idea that “The Abused” act in a certain way under specific circumstances is as absurd as it is harmful. Victims and abusers come in all shapes and sizes and they can look wherever they like.
Others on the pro-Johnny side used statements from his former partners to support that he wasn’t capable of violence. Winona Ryder, who starting dating Johnny when she was 17 and he was 25, testified in the 2020 trial, saying:
“The idea that he is an incredibly violent person is the farthest thing from the Johnny I knew and loved. I cannot wrap my head around these accusations. He was never, never violent towards me. He was never, never abusive at all towards me. He has never been violent or abusive towards anybody I have seen.”
Winona’s statement has been shared on social media multiple times as evidence of Johnny’s innocence, but not being abusive in one relationship in the 1990s doesn’t mean someone can’t be abusive in a different relationship decades later. It should also be noted that not all of Johnny’s exes had such glowing things to say about their time together; at least two women have said he became increasingly jealous and controlling during their relationship.
It was Johnny Depp himself, though, that choose to evoke the most infamous argument for undermining a victim of domestic abuse. During week two of the trial, he asked while speaking of Amber, “If she was scared to death, why didn’t she leave?”
The words were harrowing and familiar for any woman who’s ever survived a violent relationship, but Johnny’s testimony provoked admiration for the actor rather than condemnation. All over the Internet, he was lionized while Amber became 2022’s most recognizable villain.
Johnny claimed his reputation was significantly damaged by Amber’s op-ed, but this trial and the media firestorm it provoked became less about disproving Amber’s original claims and more about sabotaging her public image to a degree that far exceeded the harm caused by one article in The Washington Post. Viewers weren’t commenting on the validity of those two sentences at the center of the defamation claim, they were deciding who was the worse spouse: Johhny Depp or Amber Heard.
The couple’s former therapist testified that she believed the relationship was “mutually abusive,” something domestic abuse advocates have challenged as a misunderstanding of how abuse manifests. Should we accept that the abuse was mutual, though–and there is substantial evidence of violence inflicted by both actors–Johnny’s victory in court today is still a step back for victims everywhere, including men.
This was not a criminal trial to decide if Amber Heard was guilty of abuse. This was a defamation suit based on Amber’s claim to have been “a public figure representing domestic abuse” and to have seen “how institutions protect men accused of abuse.” Both of those sentences are vague and inarguably true. After photos of her bruised face hit the Internet, Amber did become “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” In the fallout from that, she saw institutions protecting a man accused of abuse, as her ex-husband continued working within the movie industry following their publicly contentious split. The article is so precisely written that Amber doesn’t even directly refer to herself as a victim or to her ex as a perpetrator. She “represents” victims. He was “accused” of abuse. And still, even the most ambiguous statements are not good enough.
Amber Heard now owes her ex-husband over $10 million for gesturing to the idea that he abused her, all because he could demonstrate that there were occasions in which she, too, was kinda shitty.