Lorec ⏹⏩️ 🐉 𐙚🦠⚥💀💊★✊️ 🚜🧪 🌱 🏹

“Believe all women” was never meant to mean that every man accused of rape must be guilty, and that trials should be seen as ostensibly superfluous. It was meant to suggest we should assume a posture of belief when a woman says she was raped or sexually assaulted. In the same people we would in the instance of other crimes. If someone said, “I was robbed!” the social response wasn’t to grill him about whether he was truly robbed; it would take a lot for us to be believe he hadn’t been. But if a woman said, “I was raped,” skepticism emerged immediately. It still emerges; it emerged this week with Russel Brand—I’m sure some case will come up soon where Michael Tracey types declare the woman is probably lying the moment the story hits the presses. And they’ll try to defend it as “wanting a fair trial” or “examining the evidence.” If it were about a “fair trial,” they wouldn’t presume the women are lying; they’d take an agnostic position. They might say, “I don’t think we have enough evidence to make this conviction.” They wouldn’t hammer on about how she’s obviously lying, and the courts are obviously biased, etc etc. “Believe all women” (actually, “believe women”) was and is about treating the women who say they’ve been raped like we treat the victims of any other crime. In short: it was about treating women like equal humans.