Johnny Depp's restraint

Rather than Johnny Depp being revealed a wife-batterer, Amber Heard was shown to be a violent woman. One of the most telling incidents took place in Australia whilst he was filming Pirates of the Caribbean. Depp described how he locked himself in bathrooms to escape the "endless parade" of insults and abuse he was receiving: "The house that they had rented for me in Australia was a bit of a labyrinth with a lot of rooms," he told the court. "I think I ended up locking myself in about nine bedrooms and bathrooms as she was banging on doors, screaming obscenities, wanting to have a physical altercation."

This description of Depp trying to get away from a woman screaming obscenities, sneering and tormenting him, ticked many of the boxes in the recently conducted survey of male victims of coercive control, published by psychologists from the University of Central Lancashire. Smashing property, tick. Threating to report him to the police for something he hadn't done, tick. Playing mind games, humiliating him, insulting his masculinity. Tick, tick, tick.

There was plenty of all that. Like telling Depp that he is "over the hill." "You are such a baby, grow the f--k up Johnny." "Suck my dick," Heard says repeatedly on one audio recording.

The Lancashire University survey results added to the growing body of evidence that women are just as likely as men to be perpetrators of coercive control, even though laws, recently introduced in Australia, will almost certainly target just men.

Most people realise women are experts in this type of controlling behaviour. It's just that we haven't been allowed to talk about it until this case let the cat out of the bag.

Amber Heards are everywhere. That was the message that flooded social media. The woman's appalling behaviour triggered a shudder of recognition – not just from men who have faced similar abuse from their partners but from children witnessing their fathers under siege from their mothers. I often mention the Australian Institute of Criminology research which showed similar number of children (22%) witnessing domestic violence from mothers against their fathers, as mothers being abused by their fathers (23%).

The Depp/Heard case represents a critical cultural moment – a real breakthrough in truth-telling about domestic violence, undermining the ideological straightjacket that feminists have worked so hard to maintain for the last half century.

I did not punch you; I was hitting you

There's a YouTube video called, "I did not punch you, I was hitting you" which shows Johnny Depp in court listening to a recording of Amber Heard where she angrily explains that yes, she did start a physical fight with him but indignantly points out that she never punched him, she was "just hitting him."

That's the classic female line. A hit from a woman simply doesn't matter. The ubiquitous slap on the face is the socially accepted female response to any perceived male offence. Almost every romcom features a woman whacking a man across the kisser. That's the "punchline" greeted by a gale of laughter by audiences everywhere.

Over 25 years ago, one of the world's leading domestic violence researchers, the late sociology professor Murry Straus called out this casual attitude to women's slaps in his article, Physical Assaults by Women partners: a major social problem. Straus pointed to everyday scenes in the media where a man makes an insulting comment to a woman and she responds by "slapping the cad."

Straus warned that "this presents an implicit model of assault as a morally correct behaviour to millions of women," a stance which is not only morally reprehensible but actually dangerous. Drawing on a series of studies conducted in the 1980s, Straus explained that dismissing women's violence poses a real risk to women because "minor violence by women increases the probability they will end up victims of serious male assault." She slaps, he retaliates, and she's the one more likely to be injured.