ON Friday night, a picture emerged of a woman with a bruised face. A pale young woman with a mournful gaze, wearing the black-and-purple mottling of a blunt trauma to the eye. The picture was used in court to successfully obtain a restraining order on the grounds of domestic violence, with a judge mandating the accused remain 100 yards from the woman at all times. The woman claims to have been in receipt of a campaign of physical and verbal abuse from her spouse, throughout their brief marriage.

This woman happened to be Amber Heard, wife of Johnny Depp. A celebrity coupling with a glut of publicly available life fragments up for grabs. Fragments that many felt justified in hemming together to construct the illusion of an informed opinion.

Predictably, the doting public did not adjust well to this sudden casting of their beloved Hollywood darling. We have a tendency to invest our icons with superpowers; it can be too much for some to see their heroes laden with the unbecoming details of an ordinary life. How could he be an abuser?! He was so charming in Chocolat!

For now, it is an accusation alone; but the gravity of its nature has provoked many to rally in Depp’s defence. It’s the particulars of this online defence that taste so brackish. In a matter of hours, everything from the state of Heard’s nail polish to her sexuality were used to demonise her. It’s a jagged reminder of our propensity to default to the primeval, despite millennia of accumulated knowledge.

Despite many believing that victim-blaming is a myth from feminist la-la land, it’s an extremely well-understood phenomena, created from the interplay of a myriad of attributional biases. Psychologists have long known that we assume things happen to ourselves because of the situation we’re in, but that things happen to others because of the type of people they are. This is so ingrained in the human psyche that the criminal justice system often uses it to build cases: the defence build a pictures of external, situational influence and prosecution go after character. Most also believe in a just world, that bad things happen to the bad guys, or those who make poor choices. We’re pre-programmed to blame the victim.

The media plays a key role in buttressing these victim stereotypes. In relation to media portrayals of abuse cases, sexual and domestic, there exists a binary view of women. On one side there is the Disney princess, pliant, naive and entirely subordinate. The damsel in the tower. She is no threat to the status of the powerful man. She is almost entirely absent in the news.

On the other extreme you have the wicked witch, intelligent, Machiavellian and entirely complicit. She is a threat to the status of the powerful man. The sixteen-year-old Steubenville High girl blamed for ruining the futures of young men, despite being raped, molested and photographed by them. Cologne’s mayor Henriette Reker telling women to keep an arm’s length from men and to adopt a code of conduct following the mass attack of women on New Year’s Eve. The Bedford Police’s #rightchoice campaign advising women that getting drunk made them vulnerable. Nigella Lawson, publicly assaulted, but painted as a troubled drug user.

When we consider this picture, there is no safe threshold where a woman can exhibit characteristics of both and still be absolved of guilt. A woman as a victim must not possess any of the traits that counter her as a damsel. If she possesses any blemish she will answer for it, before her aggressor is called to account. 

But, of course, the perfect victim is a myth. She exists no more than the damsel in the tower or the witch. Amber Heard is not the perfect victim. She’s beautiful. She’s famous. She’s wealthy. She’s bisexual. The wolves smell blood. She is a threat to the powerful man.

Whether he has acted wrongfully or not, the society’s attitude to the victim, combined with status and relative power, means a powerful man can act outside the limitations of normal society. How the outside world perceives him will endure because his voice is far louder than that of the woman behind him, thanks to social status and distrust of the victim. He has a million other voices to add to his own, creating a fortress of impunity. Celebrity culture acts in their favour to preserve their status and denounce the women as money-hungry, attention-starved and reckless.

So, we have two narratives intersecting here: the damsel/wicked witch, and the powerful man. How we respond to these ideas has a far wider implication, especially when we voice our opinions so readily online.

Social media plays a pivotal role in moulding and evolving social norms. As does celebrity culture. When the two work in tandem, you have a powerful force shaping the values and beliefs that we use to guide us on what is appropriate behaviour and conduct in our everyday lives. This is why we have to be especially mindful of the discourse we feed when we add our opinion to the clamour.

The most resonant commentary I’ve seen on victim blaming was from Jackson Katz, an educator who promotes the Mentors in Violence Prevention Model. He runs a programme that advocates the role of external parties in dismantling a culture that has ring-fenced abuse. He believes that by empowering bystanders to interrupt the discourse that surrounds violence – be it a joke, a headline, or a casual comment – we’ll greatly diminish that abuse. By calling it out, we erode the idea of the guilty victim as a social norm.

If we’ve got the knowledge that this is a fundamental bias, the onus is on us to act when we see it in action. As intelligent, empathetic humans, we must counter the pervasive notion that women are the architects of their own abuse. 

If someone says something that feeds into the notion that abuse is the fault of the abused, don’t be complicit in your silence. Say something. Say it’s bullshit. 

Celebrity has opened this sad, private affair up to the scrutiny of the entire world. Regardless of the facts of the Amber Heard/Johnny Depp case, a cautionary tale is laid before us.

If you’re a woman: think about how you act, how you dress, how you conduct your finances, the company you keep, your life choices and your public image. Think about every decision you have made in your life that could colour your personality and affect your credibility. 

Consider carefully your demeanour, how you behave and how you dress in the aftermath. Be sure to refrain from all emotions, private or publicly displayed, that could be perceived as antithetical to the case in hand. Be passive. Be hyper-aware of any conscious and unconscious indicators that could have encouraged the attack, and could damage your claim. 

If you’re a man: society’s got your back.