If “Believe Women” has exceptions, then it was never a principle

For years, Grace Tame has been one of the most powerful and persuasive voices in Australia insisting on a simple moral principle: believe women.
Believe survivors. Believe testimony.

Do not reflexively dismiss the accounts of women describing sexual violence.

It is a principle that has rightly challenged police, courts, institutions and a culture that too often doubts victims. For many people it has become a moral touchstone: when a woman speaks about sexual violence, the default response should be belief, empathy and seriousness rather than suspicion.
Which is why Tame’s recent claim that the rape of Israeli women on October 7 has been “debunked” as propaganda is so shocking.

Because if the principle is believe women, it cannot suddenly become: believe women — except when they are Jewish women.
On October 7 we saw images the world cannot unsee. Naama Levy — dragged into a truck in Gaza, blood soaking the back of her pants. Eyewitness accounts from survivors of the massacre. Testimony from first responders who encountered the aftermath of sexual mutilation and assault. Investigations by journalists, forensic experts and the United Nations documenting what occurred.

To dismiss all of this as “propaganda” is not skepticism. It is not feminist solidarity. It is selective disbelief in service of a political narrative. And that selective disbelief reveals something deeply uncomfortable.
If a misogynist commentator from the manosphere dismissed allegations of rape this way — waved away eyewitness testimony, mocked evidence and suggested it was fabricated propaganda — Grace Tame would be among the first to condemn it.