system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: The idea of “Believe all women” in regards to sexual assault doesn’t really make sense and/ or doesn’t mean anything.

So once again a claim of sexual assault has become a big story and this point occurred to me and I’d like to hear what other people thing. 

Basically, I dont understand why anyone would say “believe all women” or “we should believe women automatically” Are you saying that there should be a different legal standard in sexual assault/ rape cases? Ie. guilty until proven innocent? If so that is an interesting if legally unfounded opinion. If you think that we should take sexual assault allegations more seriously, than that’s a valid opinion, but ultimately if a woman makes a credible claim of sexual assault, people tend to listen (granted not always) in the same way that people listen if you say you were physically assaulted. In a practical sense, if you go to the police in good faith and report a crime, they have no reason not to believe you, now again, if the issue is that you think there is misconduct and a given case isn’t being taken seriously enough, than thats a valid point and one that I’m interested in.

All that said my main belief is that “believe all women” doesn’t really make sense and people should stop saying it. Besides that I would be interested to hear what other people think that phrase means, or why it might be useful in discourse.
gpt
The statement means "you should by default believe women who say men sexually assaulted them". It exists as an idea because in the current society people tend to automatically *disbelieve* women who say those things. As a slogan, then, it's meant to "push back" against that.

It also doesn't make a huge amount of sense to *disbelieve* women. A false accusation is usually extremely expensive (on the accuser's part) even if they get away with it, they will be vilified by their friends, the media if it goes public, etc. There's no financial incentive, and it's unlikely that the accused will even get convicted.

> Are you saying that there should be a different legal standard in sexual assault/ rape cases? Ie. guilty until proven innocent?

No. This is a common misunderstanding with regards to "innocent until proven guilty". That term in particular has been massively misused. It is literally not true that someone is "innocent until proven guilty": someone is innocent **until they commit a crime**. The "innocent until proven guilty" is a term that should be really preceded with "**criminal courts should act as if defendendants are** innocent until proven guilty", lest they violate their basic rights. In reality, of course, if you see someone steal your stuff, you don't have to wait until their convicted in court to go around telling people they stole your stuff. But when it comes to sexual assault, people tend to act as if you do.

So that's the main thrust of the slogan. People act weird when it comes to sexual assault of women, so a good default is to believe the victim first and foremost.