Believing Women and Evaluative Doubt

A key refrain of the #MeToo movement is the exhortation to Believe Women. But what does this demand specifically exhort us to do? Some philosophers have framed the problem underscored by #Believe Women as a form of testimonial injustice visited on female accusers, best understood in terms of undue or disproportionate doubt. This undue doubt, it is suggested, takes the form of a special discount applied to the evidential weight of testimony when women testify about sexual abuse, even while we blithely take so much other testimony at face value, so much of the time. Perhaps, then, the imperative to believe women is merely a corrective to this undue doubt, which may yet be at some distance from a demand to fully believe. In this paper, I consider a particular genus of disbelief, which I call ‘evaluative doubt’. The salient possibility in evaluative doubt is not that the accuser is lying, and hence not credible, but that she is mistaken in classifying what happened to her as a form of sexual assault. I explain how disagreements about the consent to sex—both philosophical and sociological in kind—provide the foundation for evaluative doubt. I then turn to ask whether evaluative doubt is, in fact, merely another kind of testimonial injustice.

This event is hosted by the Feminist Jurisprudence Discussion Group (FJDG). 

Coffee and tea will be provided.