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For days, I’ve written out, stripped the article, and written it again. I’ve been torn how and what to say, if I have the right information and then, there’s my feelings, what do I experience? How am I reacting from the inside out? My gut is drenched with familiarities, weaved in the broken pieces over Hayden Panettiere and Lindsay Clancy’s* stories.
Go with me here, it is messy, but we’ve got to find our way to this conversation and sit with the discomfort of it all.
I keep wondering,
When do we believe women? When will we protect them? Why won’t we hold women’s pain? Or men accountable?
A friend and I were mauling over both women and she lamented, women are terrible at holding other women’s pain. In a white-dominated west, yeh,
…she is right. And so, I keep wondering,
When does shame change sides? And how can we fight for women who are dead or paralyzed?
I am not convinced Hayden’s ex is not involved, I am not convinced he didn’t over dose her. The protection order against him had lapsed, he was out of jail, he was in the room when she died.
I am not convinced Lindsay’s husband didn’t murder his children or attempt to murder her. I am convinced he was the “voice” she kept hearing on 30 medications.
I am not convinced these men aren’t responsible. I want them investigated. I want the truth. The hard evidences presented thus far in each case is far to too dicey for it to be so simple, to toss them aside as women’s sins and consequences.
These women were fighting for their lives from the inside-out.
Lindsay Clancy is accused of murdering her 3-children after a psychotic break and alleged to take her own life by jumping out of a window which left her paralyzed. She was a registered nurse, who sought doctors and psychological help after going through what seems to be an extreme case of postpartum. However, the case has been rocked as new evidence unfolds about her partner/ex-partner’s whereabouts, mysterious searches online about incisions and suicide before the event, and lack of care or inquiry by surrounding medical and mental health professionals.
Hayden Panettiere, 36 was a life long actress who struggled with substance abuse and recently opened up about her childhood, postpartum depression, giving up parental rights over her daughter and IPV with a recent partner. Her case is under investigation overall, though it’s been suggested no foul play, which seems problematic.
Addiction, mental chaos, trauma, exhaustion, desperation, and outcry, in text and in the public spheres, women are punished when we speak. What salts the wounds are when other women enable patriarchal blame. White women in particular struggle to sit with the idea that the entire system is built against them ~against us.
The outcry now over Clancy and Panettiere was not shown to Amber Heard or Blake Lively because they are connected to men, white women swoon over. The men who abused them have more public clout.
And we’ve learned, in Heard’s case, according to a Tortis research investigation, she was “barraged” with “manufactured online hate” which “jeopardized” her right to a fair trial. Tortis discovered many of the bots who flooded the internet with smear messages came from Saudi Arabia. Pro-Johnny Depp AI accounts popped up to reverse the focus on his childhood, along with internet campaigns out of Spain, Thailand and Chile. Depp is now receiving funding for films from Saudi.
I need you to feel the gravitas of this:
Amber Heard was slammed and the public believed she was shit because she fought for herself, because she didn’t cry in court, because a psychologist picked by Depp’s team diagnosed her with NPD. They believed the bots online, and joined the smear campaigns, and swooned over Depp (I even had a former friend, a woman, break our friendship because of my critique of Depp in a public stories post on my Instagram) Despite the evidence. Despite Depp’s history. Despite Heard’s case won in the U.K., her pain went unheard.
She has said, sitting down for a recent documentary, Silenced
I have lost my ability to speak. I am not here to tell my story. I don’t want to tell my story. In fact, I don’t want to use my voice anymore. That’s the problem
Y’all, this is fucking painful.
And so, when I return to the two cases flooding the internet, I keep wondering what are the key elements?
It’s all about the Perfect Victim.
Women are painted as weak, therefore, on one hand, if she fought back she’s the problem, she should have complied. If she complied or “fawned” and “fled” - she upholds her “weak-status” in the eyes of the public (even then other women join men in asking “why didn’t she leave?!” Or “she should’ve said something!” We can’t fucking win)
But to actually “fight back?” To make the rage and reaction public? To hold steady in court? Or worse, to detail, use coarse language and strip back of veil (hi. Welcome, have you met me yet?).
Taboo.
And it plays out something like this:
Lindsay is fighting back, but from a wheel chair and there is a large part a the case focused on her motherhood, and what the body goes through after birth, which of course matters. But White Women can stomach motherhood and paralysis (truth hurts don’t it?). I do not think it would play out the same if her body was whole.
Hayden’s public dismantling was messy and she had make-up artists and privilege for every talk show, therefore her drug problems were her own, can’t blame others for her mistakes, right? (and her estranged mother has been no help), the public discourse is mixed about her.
Heard and Likely aren’t favored actresses, and therefore not “likable” or must be the real problem.
Back to the 90s: Anita Hill is Black. Racism discredited her fight back (as it has for Black Women*). And her assailant still sits on SCOTUS while women around the country continue to get their rights ripped away from divorce, to abortion rights to work equality (you’re damn right I’m going to mention this one).
The conditions for sympathy become conditional on her perceived weakness, her race, her status, if the man is societally well known or liked. I want to call women in on this. We need to wrestle how we turn on each other and uphold the systems of injustice and abuse.
Coercive control is a sinister game. Patriarchal systems are built on it. Intimate partner violence needs it to maintain power. Before a woman is assaulted, she is, essentially, brainwashed into a fawn response, unable, to make sense of her reality.
THIS is what actually haunts me about Lindsey Clancy’s case. She said she heard a male voice whispering to her. She was not diagnosed with schizophrenia. So who the fuck was the voice? Who was massaging her brain while she was on a cocktail of prescribed drugs?
In Panettiere’s room that night, what did her fucking ex say while the drugs were sinking into her system?
It draws to my own experiences. The subtleties to weaken a woman’s resolve, to weaken her fight, by infusing her mind with helplessness, hopelessness and compliance. To temper her fight back. And when white women repeat them, in resentment, fear or dismissal, it perpetuates abuse and gender based violence.
Audre Lorde said,
“True focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
So then,
The whispers of men must be confronted.
…tbc…
Ash is a survivor, a DV advocate, coach, and commentator, using a somatic and trauma theory lens reshape narratives into reclamation. To connect, work with/intv (podcast) with her, email here.
* Note: In all this, I cannot go without commenting on Boston’s Latarsha Sanders, a Black woman who was convicted in 2022, of similar circumstances to Clancy, in the murder of her children. Sanders team was not allowed to present medical evidence and the presiding judge was also, William Sullivan. Racism and Socioeconomic biases played a role. Thankfully, Sanders is awaiting a re-trial and previous convictions were set aside by the State Supreme Court.
Further recommended read by Ash:
Social Justice
Shame Must Change Sides
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January 6, 2025
Fifty-one convictions, Gisèle Pelicot ripped her case wide open for all the world to see. How fitting last year ended with her victory, not just because of her testimony but she put her ex-husband an…
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