How to be a perfect victim of sexual violence or domestic abuse: A Begginer’s Guide in 10 easy steps

1. Try and be white

If you’re not, it’s probably all gang/drugs related, Sharia law, or an honour thing.

2. Be young, and pretty-ish

Remember having ‘your whole life ahead of you’ is key to public empathy, and it’s only really a terrible shame/waste if you’re attractive. But don’t be too attractive. Because then you could have been asking for it… Look, just make sure that if you are careless enough to die there’s a good pic for the news, k?

3. Have a job – in a caring profession

Avoid being poor, unemployed or homeless because then no one cares about you.

It’s best to have a job doing some sort of good public work for not enough money. Don’t do anything dull, controversial, or earning a lot of money – because people don’t relate to that if you’re a girl.

4. Be heterosexual, monogomous, and chaste/sexually conservative

Remember that any sort of ‘alternative’ lifestyle, any promiscuity, history of promiscuity or overt enjoyment of your sexuality is unacceptable – and you were probably asking for it (again)/trying to make them jealous/just regretting it afterwards.

5. Don’t have mental health problems

If you’ve experienced depression, anxiety, a personality disorder or other mental illness – or if you’re on your period – you’re clearly a psycho/unstable/cray cray. So there’s probably more to it than we know, and there’s two sides to every story, no smoke without fire, etc.

6. Don’t be drunk or on drugs

If you’re going to get off your face things happen, things get out of control – that’s life. You should know better and have some respect for yourself. And God.

7. Show the exact right amount of emotion

It’s really important to emote in the right way, at the right time, in the right amount.

Some top tips:

* If you’re not screaming NO NO NO you were really saying yes, weren’t you? I mean how is an attacker/abuser to know the difference? Frozen with fear? Checked out? Trying to appease your attacker to avoid getting hurt/killed? Pfffft. No one’s going to buy it, love.

* If you’re asked about it afterwards you MUST try to weep and sob on cue. You can’t expect people to believe you if you’re not visibly traumatised, ALL of the time. That means no moments of reprieve laughing with friends or family – ever – because if you can do that you’re clearly lying.

* But you don’t want to come across as hysterical, no one likes that. Histrionics are just going to prove you’re the unhinged one. See point no 5. Or you’re hamming it up.

* Try and be pretty when you cry, but not beautiful, obvs. Look, it’s not that hard, see point no 2.

8. Fight back if you’re being sexually assualted, but never fight back if you’re a victim of domestic abuse

Fighting back an attacker is necessary to prove you weren’t really enjoying it. Fighting back an abuser means you’re both as bad as each other, it’s a ‘toxic’ relationship or ‘domestic dispute’, and actually you’re probably the REAL abuser here, anyway. There’s also no such thing as a pre-emptive strike, small acts of rebellion, or provocation in order to control what happens and when. It’s six of one and half a dozen of another, at the very least. And unladylike/undignified.

9. Be more popular/powerful than your attacker/abuser

Don’t forget to only be attacked or abused by people who are less popular, well known or connected than you are. If your fanbase/group of friends/instagram following is larger and more vocal, you’ve basically won he said-she said straight off the bat!

10. Be likeable

Don’t have any character flaws, any bad days, or ever have lost your temper with anyone since primary school – because they will come out of the woodwork and assassinate your personality on the basis of any single interaction, and it just goes to show what you’re really like, what goes around comes around, you reap what you sew, and that’s karma for you.

I don’t want to get too deep into the whole Amber Heard v Johnny Depp thing, not least because I don’t want to be jumped on by the rabid TEAM JOHNNY vigilantes who seem to have taken over an alarming amount of my news feed.

But.

I am increasingly frustrated by the vitriolic posts I’m seeing that dissect Amber’s every action, word, and expression – and find in them all evidence of her villany. Amber has quite clearly NOT followed all of my 10 rules above… She may be white but she’s may be a bit TOO pretty, and she then continues to fail on every other trait of being a ‘perfect’ victim.

That doesn’t mean she isn’t one.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not up to me to say whether she is or not; it’s up to a court. Which is why having it all streamed out on the internet and made into TikToks, polls and memes is so completely awful – and so damaging. The court of public opinion has condemned her, without all the facts or any of the nuance. And abusive relationships ARE nuanced. They can be incredibly complicated. The real key in unpicking them is to look for the imbalance of power – physical, financial and social. And wherever it was before, I’d say Johnny fans have tipped the balance firmly towards him…

One of my biggest fears about this case is about what other victims are now seeing. What they are seeing about what happens when you speak out, what happens when you try and take some of the power back – and what happens when you know you can’t follow this ‘perfect victim’ guide.

I’m also very afraid this case and its coverage is actively setting us back by reframing domestic abuse as an equal-opportunities issue. Because it isn’t. Men can absolutely be victims of domestic abuse, and they need specialist support and interventions. Women can absolutely be perpetrators, and need to be stopped, punished, and rehabilitated.

But this is overwhelmingly an issue that affects WOMEN.

It is overwhelmingly something that is perpetrated by MEN.

I don’t want one high profile case, and one imperfect victim, to muddy those waters.

Amber isn’t the greatest domestic abuse advocate/cover girl – but then the whole point is that she shouldn’t have to be.