I don't feel its fair to automatically believe or disbelieve any accusation. There are loads of reasons people might make a false accusations (to avoid the stigma/shame of consenting to something they later regret, to get revenge, plain confusion or lack of memory on what happened- especially if drugs or alcohol were involved, to get attention, mental illness, coercion or pressure from others, etc). Likewise, there are loads of obvious reasons why someone who did commit an assault will lie about it. In many cases, it is very difficult if not impossible to prove innocence or guilt. Even the courts sometimes get it wrong. While I think every victim should be empowered to come forward, it's not realistic to assume they are all telling the truth. Victims deserve justice, but those who have been falsely accused also deserve not to have their lives ruined over something they did not do.
My childhood was spent in endless court battles with one member of my family accusing another of sexually abusing me. I spent many years believing it was true, then many more after that questioning it for a plethora of reasons. I will never have 100% certainty on whether it happened or not, or if it did, if the accused was actually the perpetrator. At this point, I'm pretty confident that the accused is innocent and was drug through the mud by someone with a mental illness who either projected her own past onto me or accused the wrong person, likely both... but I will always have that small seed of doubt. Somehow through it all, I still have a relationship with both the accuser and the accused.
My experience has taught me that it is so easy for people to point fingers, make accusations, and be incredibly convincing...on both sides. Sometimes there's overwhelming proof, and sometimes there's just no way to ever know the truth about a situation. While it's great that more women feel empowered to speak out, those who are accused shouldn't automatically be labeled guilty in our rush to want to support anyone who has been victimized. Absolutely if it can be proven that someone is guilty, they should be castrated and left in a cage with ravenous animals to tear them apart. It seems like more often though, people who aren't even involved in the allegations are called out as anti-women simply for not automatically jumping on the bandwagon of "let's fire/boycott/destroy the accused because any woman making an accusation must be believed."
And for what it's worth, even given what I dealt with as a child and some other relevant experiences as an adult that I didn't go into, I too found it ironic what the movement was named and chuckled when I first noticed it. While sexual abuse is never funny, pointing out irony in a name is far from anything I personally choose to get offended over.
