#BelieveWomen and the ethics of belief

[Extract] How should we understand the social project of the “#BelieveWomen” campaign? and what does the presumption of innocence even mean outside legal contexts? Kimberly Ferzan’s chapter in this volume (“#BelieveWomen and the Presumption of Innocence: Clarifying the Questions for Law and Life”) pursues both questions with rigor and clarity, and my contribution will engage closely with hers. Obviously, a slogan can be used to mean many things, and undoubtedly there’s substantial variation in what those who tweet #BelieveWomen actually mean. I’m pursuing a partly reconstructive, rather than purely descriptive project: I seek a charitable interpretation that construes the demand made in the most reasonable and well-grounded way consistent with (many but not all) of the ways the tag is actually used.