Moira Donegan: The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial was an orgy of misogyny

The backlash to #MeToo has long been under way. But this feels like a tipping point

The verdict "will have a devastating effect on survivors, who will be silenced, now, with the knowledge that they cannot speak about their violent experiences at men’s hands without the threat of a ruinous libel suit." Picture: Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP

In text messages to friends, Johnny Depp fantasized about murdering his then-wife, the actress Amber Heard. “I will fuck her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she’s dead,” Depp wrote. In other texts, he disparaged his wife’s body in luridly misogynist terms. “Mushy pointless dangling overused floppy fish market,” he called her.

The texts became public as part of Depp’s defamation suit against Heard, now at trial in a Virginia court. Ostensibly, Depp is suing over a 2018 article that Heard published in the Washington Post, titled “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath.”