Culturally Accepted Misogyny
Joan of Navarre to Amber Heard
One year ago we were inundated with the defamation trial of Amber Heard instigated by her ex-husband Johnny Depp. It was impossible to turn on a wifi connected device and avoid the barrage of trial (mis)information, grifting, and open misogyny. Overnight, our collective energy went into the decimation of a woman’s character who was brave enough to share her truth. Anyone that dared voice support for Amber was swept into the hurricane-force-winds of misogynistic rhetoric; labeled a sexist for not believing that Johnny, the 46 year-old who had pursued a 22 year-old, was in-fact the victim within a situation that he held all the power.
People existing within abusive relationships everywhere were watching the entire nation drag Amber Heard through the proverbial mud for fighting back. Her humanity disregarded as they hailed Johnny Depp a victim (and a hero!) while unironically victimizing Amber in the very same breath. Cognitive dissonance allowing them to put on full display their lack of knowledge on how intimate partner violence layered with trauma impacts behavior, yet offering their opinion as if it was weighted as strongly as the experts warning them of the harm they were perpetuating. The culturally accepted vitriol was women’s reminder of their place within a patriarchal society and what the outcome would be if they dared challenge it. 15th century women would have recognized this behavior policing (sans Tik-Tok.)
“This trial has conjured, in perfect, terrifying detail, a near-comprehensive list of reasons why any woman can be discredited, villainized, and crucified in the court of public opinion: if you ever dared to do anything but lie down and let yourself be hurt.” -
In 2023 we like to believe that we have progressed far beyond what our medieval ancestors would be able to comprehend, yet they would have had an intimate understanding of the “culture of spectacle” we witnessed during the trial. Amber’s character was publicly eviscerated and stuck to the social-media-gate-post to warn off future evil doers. A devastating reminder of what happens when conduct falls outside of patriarchal expectations and a clear contemporary example of patriarchal propaganda. All that was missing was the paper crown and a hastily scratched manifesto.
Patriarchal social and gender norms are deeply internalized due to what the Foucauldian theory1 explains as our transition from a ‘culture of spectacle’ (as we saw in medieval times) to ‘carceral culture’ (what we see now with the prison industrial system and heavy policing.) We no longer need to bear witness to the brutality of those in power through gruesome public displays because we’ve internalized centuries of consequence and domination. Unconsciously aligning our behavior to avoid ‘barbarity.’ In an ever surveilled society, we behave because we know we are being watched, even if just by technology. The panoptic power of the patriarchy makes the thought of even being perceived enough to police behavior. The convergence of medieval misogyny upon modern technology allowed for the onslaught of accusations we saw arise from the court of public opinion against Amber Heard. Misogyny veiled via meme-ification.
The inhumanity was reminiscent of the medieval, designed to enforce conformity to the domination model and adherence to socialized gender norms. Lack of submission equals public crucifixion. Just as medieval punishments were meant to be visceral, understood by even the most uneducated and socially-remote person of the realm as the outcome for certain thoughts and behaviors, this barrage of misogyny was the patriarchy exercising and enforcing it’s power, accessible via all media outlets. It was meant to be in your face, normalizing the misogynistic rhetoric whilst explicitly communicating it’s hatred for women. Even Amber’s ‘overly girly’ personality was used against her, cited as evidence of histrionic personality disorder2; femininity as a prosecutable trait is misogyny in it’s purest form.
Depp, the experienced entertainer that he is, understood the importance of creating a spectacle and swaying public opinion. In his post victory press release, his camp stated: “False, very serious and criminal allegations were levied at me via the media, which triggered an endless barrage of hateful content, although no charges were ever brought against me. It had already traveled around the world twice within a nanosecond and it had a seismic impact on my life and my career.” They must have forgotten the condemnation of those doing the very same to Amber Heard, omitting that she had never publicly named him nor that his public image was spiraling of his own accord. The image projected ensured to be perceived through the lens of patriarchal bias due to centuries of internalization, allowing us to overlook Johnny’s nefarious intentions while ascribing blame to the one he victimized. Avoiding accountability through co-opting victimization; A clear example of DARVO in real-time, starkly highlighting our collective lack of knowledge in abuse patterns and how to counter them. (Which is of course on purpose.)3
“Johnny Depp’s career has been fizzling out for years. He’s spent the 2010s putting out the lowest-rated performances of his career and watching his star power and cultural currency fade as he sunk further into bouts of addiction and self-destruction, while surrounding himself with misogynists and abusers at every turn. He’s accused Heard of dragging his name through the mud for attention, despite the fact that she never even used his name at all — instead, he instigated the public battle, had the trial be televised, and summoned the media circus. Now, he’s beloved again, and more popular than he’s been in over a decade.” -
Minimization of greed is a pillar of US culture, causing us to then further minimize individual acts of avarice, writing them off as a side effect of proximity to power instead of the causation of power. As bell hooks rightly said “greed and exploitation become the norm when an ethic of domination prevails.”4 A woman sitting at the peak of privilege is still considered lesser-than any man within a patriarchal system and this trial was sure to remind us all of that. If Amber’s truth couldn’t be heard, how will we hear the truth of the most marginalized women in our communities? Johnny profitably used our cultural climate of actively criminalizing women and their sexual and reproductive rights to further the narrative that women’s emotions are dangerous. His greed and misogyny concealed beneath the false pretenses of victimhood, allowing him to reinvigorate his public image reminding us all he’s still just that goofy pirate, wholly scapegoating his harmful nature.
Powerful men don’t fear the consequences of committing sexual violence. They fear being one of the unlucky few who’s chosen to publicly face some degree of accountability so the rest can continue to violate women in peace. And now, the most influential among them don’t even fear that anymore, because Depp has proven that our culture will be far quicker to circle their wagons around a man whose image is under threat than to consider for a second that a woman might be telling the truth. There’s a reason why defamation suits in particular are becoming abusers’ first line of defence: a man’s reputation has always been considered more precious than a woman’s life. -
Johnny is not the first man to improve his own personal position through sacrificing a woman’s livelihood, nor will he be the last. The precedent set with the Depp vs. Heard outcome is predicted to result in a decrease of victims reporting and litigating abuse, further perpetuating the cycles of exploitation. We know that abusers will now utilize defamation suits to silence victims, which will devastatingly impact the already abysmal reporting numbers as they stand. Though none of those outcomes are important to a man like Johnny existing at the apex of power and privilege. And much like Johnny’s inability to recognize the long term harm his narcissistic needs would perpetuate, Henry V of England laid the foundation for the misogyny-fueled witchcraft charges of the 15th century to satiate his own greed and blood-lust.
On February 7th 1403, Joan of Navarre became the most powerful woman in England. It was also the same day she happened to marry the king, Henry Bolingbroke, or Henry IV as history knows him. Henry had usurped the throne from his royal cousin, Richard II, and was securing his position with a majestic royal wedding and coronation, respectively. Soon after Joan was confirmed with the crown safely upon her head, Henry declared her dower. “Henry gave her the largest dower of any English queen up to that point, a huge 10,000 marks (around £6,666) a year. At this time, the total revenue of the English crown was just under £56,000 a year, meaning Joan was receiving roughly a ninth of the total annual income of the government. Joan’s dower made her one of the wealthiest people in the land - perhaps only below the king himself.”5
Not only was Joan in a unique position as a queen to possess access to such wealth, she was one of the few medieval consorts (possibly even the only) who was not required to provide the realm with a nursery full of royal heirs. Henry’s first marriage with Mary de Bohun had been productive, resulting in 6 children, 4 of which were boys, firmly securing his position. This allowed Henry assurances of lineage and legacy without the need for his wife to sacrifice her anatomy, and potentially her life, which surely gave Joan a sense of personal security most consorts did not experience within these Middle Ages.
All historical evidence indicates that Joan was beloved by her step-children, and when Henry IV died in 1413 ten years into their marriage, she became the “most dear mother” of the new king Henry, the future hero of Azincourt. Though Bolingbroke had reigned for 14 years, he left his son with a litany of issues: a shaky claim to his position and a realm experiencing civil skirmishes, poverty, plague, and an active war in France. Though Joan’s position remained comfortable through the change, it would not remain so indefinitely.
Upon assuming the throne, Henry V decided to reinvest in his paternal claim to the French crown through Edward III’s lineage, and he was incredibly successful in his endeavor. The political climate within France was in disarray due to two feuding noble families and a mentally unwell king, allowing Henry entrance through the proverbial back door. He quickly secured an auspicious victory on the fields of Azincourt in 1415, allowing him to further move into the country and claim large swatches of territories. However successful Henry was in his endeavors, after a few years of parliament supported war funds via taxation, England’s resources were starting to run dry as he continued his campaign on the continent. Eventually, his lords spiritual and temporal agreed that the English could no longer afford taxation to support the war, causing Henry to seek creative ways to fund his war efforts. Enter Joan, his incredibly wealthy step-mother.
According to since lost documentation referenced within 18th century historian Agnes Strickland’s ‘Lives of the Queens of England’, Henry started seeking means to access Joan’s wealth in the beginning of 1419. In August, Henry ordered a trusted kinswoman to seize the goods of Joan’s personal confessor, though upon inspection the goods most likely “belonged to Joan. The items collected were extremely sumptuous and showed the utter luxury Joan had been living in.” But goods and gold weren’t enough to fund an expensive war on another continent. If Joan were to be charged with a heinous enough crime, however, her wealth in the form of land and rent would revert to the crown.
On September 27th 1419, Parliament Rolls record Joan’s confessor admitting she’d ‘plotted and schemed for the death and destruction of our said lord the King in the most evil and terrible manner imaginable.’ Along with this declaration, two other members of Joan’s household were accused and seizure of their goods and chattels ensued, effectively filling up the crown’s coffers. Joan was imprisoned upon charges of witchcraft, though Henry never formally brought her to trial, sparing her the death sentence attached to the charge of treason. Greed was the catalyst for Henry’s exploitation of Joan, while patriarchal male-supremacy provided him with the confident cognitive dissonance to do so.
Though Joan was released and reinstated in 1422, a month before her step son’s early demise to dysentery, Henry’s utilization of her set a precedent that more dangerous men would later follow. In 1441, enemies of Joan’s stepson would employ the very same charges against his wife to ensure his expulsion from influential positions. In 1449, another former daughter by law of Joan’s, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, was charged with witchcraft in efforts to disrupt and dispel her influence upon Edward IV and his consort, Elizabeth Woodville. These charges of witchcraft were medieval fear-mongering, allowing men in positions of power to exploit women when they dared posses too much of their own power, their own agency, or if they simply got in the way of men satiating their lust for greed.
Time and again we have witnessed men resurrect their position off the back of women’s livelihoods. In a white-supremacist capitalist patriarchal society, we all benefit when projecting our own internalized misogyny as we saw during the Depp vs. Heard trial. It places us within proximity to intoxicating power which the patriarchy has over promised and under delivered. It was culturally accepted misogyny. But as we dehumanize others, it creates more opportunities for our own exploitation down the historical line. Joan was a dowager queen beloved by her family and realm with access to immense wealth and power. And much like Amber Heard, she had access to privilege that most women don’t experience within a patriarchy. If that wasn’t enough to protect them, what is?
Further Reading/Watching/Listening:
Internet Princess, by
I quote from rayne’s impactful piece quite a few times within this essay. Please hop over to their SubStack and receive the wealth that is their words for yourself.
A Bit Fruity Podcast, with Matt Bernstein and guests
An Open Letter in Support of Amber Heard
Five months ago, the verdict in the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard deeply concerned many professionals in the fields of intimate partner and sexual violence.
As many, including A.O. Scott for The New York Times have noted, the vilification of Ms. Heard and ongoing online harassment of her and those who have voiced support for her have been unprecedented in both vitriol and scale.
Much of this harassment was fueled by disinformation, misogyny, biphobia, and a monetized social media environment where a woman’s allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault were mocked for entertainment. The same disinformation and victim-blaming tropes are now being used against others who have alleged abuse.
In our opinion, the Depp v. Heard verdict and continued discourse around it indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of intimate partner and sexual violence and how survivors respond to it. The damaging consequences of the spread of this misinformation are incalculable. We have grave concerns about the rising misuse of defamation suits to threaten and silence survivors.
We condemn the public shaming of Amber Heard and join in support of her. We support the ability of all to report intimate partner and sexual violence free of harassment and intimidation.
Royal Witches, by Gemma Hollman
Conquest, by Juliet Baker
Joan of Arc, by Helen Castor
https://www.cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/newhistoricism/modules/foucaultcarceral.html
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/amber-heard-johnny-depp-trial-borderline-personality-mental-health-b998112.html
https://butchanarchy.medium.com/the-point-of-darvo-ba0ace243e4e
bell hooks, all about love - https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/all-about-love/
Gemma Hollman, Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the nobility in fifteenth-century England - https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/ask-the-author-gemma-hollman-on-royal-witches/
This reminds me of when I was debating misogyny throughout history with a group of men. They said men had run the world throughout history and that’s because they are “naturally” better at leading. I asked, “what about women like Joan of Arc?”, they said, “Okay, but that’s just one whore throughout all of history”...
I felt my face heat with not just rage, but embarrassment and sadness. And realization too, I guess.
I’ve never heard such hate speech before...