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“Neither was Amber an “everywoman.” She was a Hollywood celebrity with money, an armored truck and driver, a revolving door of lawyers, PR wizards, and media connections at the ready. Her existence was totally alien from the day-to-day lives of most domestic-violence victims. This doesn’t mean she couldn’t also be a victim of abuse—but she wasn’t a stand-in for other survivors. Society tends to use celebrities as vessels to carry every social examination, every social problem, every social ill. But celebrities aren’t the norm they aren’t representative of anything except celebrity. Amber said time and time again that she chose to speak up about Johnny’s abuse for those who don’t have a voice. But Amber hadn’t assumed a central role in the #MeToo movement on her own; she was aided and encouraged by powerful institutions like the ACLU and the Washington Post, which viewed her as an apt representative for the latest cause célèbre, betraying their own detachment from everyday victims. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many sectors of the media held the line on this narrative, trumpeting Amber as a martyr for the movement and selling her experience as exemplary and relatable. In their analyses of the trial as a systemic failure and “the death of #MeToo,” they failed to see their own complicity in constructing a myopic, unrelatable notion of social justice.” — Kelly Loudenberg