"Even the most vocal or passionate feminists will agree that the hashtag is only asking you to give the benefit of the doubt to the survivor who is often a woman or belonging to a disenfranchised part of the society, rather than automatically giving it to the perpetrator who is often a man. As Tarana Burke, civil rights activist and founder of the #MeToo movements put it in an episode of Mic Dispatch: “‘Believe women’ or ‘believe survivors’ is not just like, ‘Believe us at all costs, don’t investigate,’ you know, ‘If I say it, it’s true.’ It is—let’s start with a premise that people aren’t lying and at least give them the respect of interrogating what they’re saying.”
