Jun 12, 2022 • 21M

AUDIO ESSAY + DISCUSSION: who's afraid of amber heard?

assigning deviance to difficult women, now with vocal fry

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rayne fisher-quann
cultural criticism & its consequences. essays from rayne fisher-quann's internet princess read aloud, perhaps more in the future...
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CW: sexual violence and abuse

this took an hour to record and i have literally completely lost my voice!! i think you can actually hear me struggling through the words at the end because my throat hurt so much. talk about women’s pain, am i right …

definitely use this space to let me know what you think about the trial & resulting cultural spectacle. the one thing i really wanted to get into in the piece that i had to cut for space is the construction of Heard’s mental illness, how illness intersects with abuse, and how it pertains to the cultural fear of crazy women. she was spot-diagnosed with BPD and HPD and those pathologizations were used to justify and confirm her status as an abuser (and i say this in the article, but the symptoms referenced were literally “being girly” and “wanting attention” and shit — more like Certified Woman Disease!!!). men often seek out women with personality disorders or mental illnesses to abuse for exactly this reason: they know they can instigate a reaction, they know she sometimes won’t act rationally, and most importantly, they know nobody will trust or believe her. it’s terrifying to watch it work in real-time. if anyone has thoughts (or just wants to talk about their day) drop ‘em below <3

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