Amber Heard Is the Wrong Sort of Victim — but I Was Too

Why do we choose to believe some abused women over others?

Photo by Malicki M Beser on Unsplash

I have written several times before about my toxic first marriage, about my years spent with a man who claimed to love me but hated everything about me and who I was and what I stood for. A man who hit me in the stomach when I was pregnant. A man who checked the mileometer of my car and punished me if he thought the miles listed on it suggested that I had driven to secret destinations, places other than my school or the shops. (I never had). A man who had plenty of money but who would give me small handfuls of cash to buy food for our daughter, just at the point I became desperate and worried about where her next meal would come from.

There is no doubt, none at all, that he was abusive to me. Mine was a story, mercifully brief but still a story, of domestic violence. He controlled me financially, emotionally, and physically. Our marriage wasn’t long, but its scars run deep. Over the years — as stories like mine have been dragged into the light, as coercive control became a crime in England and Wales, as the internet and particularly social media created more and more awareness of the insidious forms abuse can take — I have felt a cautious hope. I honestly believed that young women today have more options than I did. More access…