war-lesbian:

it is scary to make a statement like “I think the allegations against this person are false, i think they were motivated by some other personal or political dispute, i think that a great violence is being done to them,” especially on a public media platform, especially in such a relevant political moment.

i am well aware that for most people, every other time they have heard a statement like that they have known it to be bullshit, because it has been bullshit. i know how it superficially resembles the kind of apologia we hear for rich, powerful, male celebrities all the time. i know that rape accusations are almost always true. 

but to act like merely because someone is saying these words, because of that superficial resemblance of the two situations that that must be what is going on, is to ignore the histories of lynching, of homophobic and transmisogynist violence, of the way that false accusations have always been used to justify violence against oppressed groups. is to ignore that these groups are treated as predatory and violent merely for existing. 

we are told to support and believe victims. but a person saying they are being falsely accused of abuse, either by their own abuser, or by their friends, or by a group of bigoted strangers who will do anything to shut them up, that is a person claiming they are being abused. so what do you fucking do? are they not part of that equation? do they not count because it would be too inconvenient to count them? because it would throw off the certainty with which you could enact your brand of justice in some other situation? if it is enough merely for me to be in the same bathroom as a cis woman to make her feel assaulted, do you believe her when she tells you she’s a victim? when she invents new details to strengthen her story? what the fuck do you DO!