"... and you’ll discover how language, like a virus, can mutate overnight. All of a sudden, yesterday’s quotes suffer the insertion of some foreign DNA that makes them easy to weaponize. In this case, that foreign intrusion is a word: 'all.' 'All' insertion was all the rage during the Kavanaugh hearings. When senators from Kamala Harris to Mazie Hirono had their regard for Dr. Blasey’s credibility elevated by Fox News pundits to universal gender credulity, their actual words, 'I believe her,' became believe all women. 'That’s literally the hashtag,' former Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus said in February 2019.... Is there 'literally' a hashtag? Well, kind of.... Type in #BelieveAllWomen for 2017, when the #MeToo movement took off in October, and you get several dozen references, followed in 2018 (the year of the Kavanaugh hearings) by many more. But here’s the thing: I found that the hashtag is, by a wide margin, used mostly by its detractors. It seems that #BelieveAllWomen first appeared on Twitter in late 2014, in three tweets — by an Ontario midwife.... Then, in the fall of 2015, Hillary Clinton posted a tweet: 'To every survivor of sexual assault … you have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed.' To which Juanita Broaddrick, who alleges that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978, responded on Twitter on Jan. 6, 2016, 'Hillary tried to silence me.' Conservative editor David French, who has a large Twitter following... retweeted Ms. Broaddrick at once — attaching the hashtag #BelieveAllWomen, followed by four question marks.... As happens, the canard, blown into a bonfire by the right, became accepted truth in mainstream media...."
From "'Believe All Women' Is a Right-Wing Trap/How feminists got stuck answering for a canard," by Susan Faludi (NYT).
I appreciate that tracking down the origin of a saying that can't possibly be right. It is a good taunt coming from the right, and it's important to know how to keep from getting tangled up in it.
But I can't resist taking a shot at that "canard, blown into a bonfire." A "canard" — as all of us who took French class should remember — is a duck. The French word has been used in English since the 1840s to mean "A false or unfounded story, rumour, or claim, esp. one that is deliberately misleading; (originally) spec. an extravagant or absurd story circulated to deceive the credulous; a hoax" (OED). It's a dying metaphor, so you have to watch out for putting it with other metaphors, like a bonfire. I can't read "canard, blown into a bonfire" without picturing a poor waterfowl bursting into flames...
— Connor Ratliff (@connorratliff) February 18, 2019
Posts
137 comments:
susan Faludi theres a blast from the past, she and naomi wolf, who went mad about a decade ago, are the Bobbsey twins,
'Believe All Women' Is a Right-Wing Trap/How feminists got stuck answering for a canard,"
Correct. But then, we always knew that feminists think we should only believe some women. One point of the "canard" is to expose their convenient selectivity. Feminism is the theory that women are special--and some women more special than others.
But pray tell, feminists: is Juanita Broaddrick more or less believable than CBF? And is what she asserts more or less serious than what CBF claims?
Anyway, we all agree that, for progs, avoiding "right-wing traps" is more important than believing all women.
To believe Blaisey Ford required that one believe all women. There's no one who will bring less evidence than she did.
Read them all and weep. It was a Progressive chant. They are dumb and idiotic. WHERE is WOW?? Why haven't they spoken up for Tara Reade??? ONLY because she accused Biden. If she accused any Republican, she would be a national hero like Blasey Ford is. There are a bunch...…
https://twitchy.com/?s=believe+all+women
All you have to do is look up and see the signs at the PUSSY HAT Parades.
Some comedy skit long ago had a couple ordering at a French restaurant and one saying to the waiter, "I'll have the canard." American pronunciation.
That particular hashtag may be some kind of right wing ironic taunt. But the idea that "Women Don't Lie About Rape" is something that feminists have been sincerely promoting for a long time. As a quick Google search will confirm.
Now it's convenient for feminists to believe that women sometimes do lie about rape. So we get columns like this one. But next time a Republican gets accused they'll be back telling us that Women Don't Lie About Rape, mmmkay?
John Denver couldn't be reached for comment.
"The right, being averse to principle, has long known how to turn the left’s expressions of principle into Achilles’ heels. Even when it has to make up the expression."
The lofty principles of the left do astound me.
"All" makes it too easy (and ridiculous).
The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do, but the canard is a distraction.
Here comes that canard! Duck!
I didn't believe Blasey Ford, and I think Tara Reade's story is quite problematic, even though she has more evidence of contemporary confirmation.
I don't think that belief is the proper test in this type of situation. I have my opinion about Joe Biden based on observation since 1972. He has been pretty consistent in his tenuous grasp of reality. His gibes and japes have worked for years, but they are failing him now.
I can't read "canard, blown into a bonfire" without picturing a poor waterfowl bursting into flames...
You must've had a really tough time reading Bonfire of the Vanities.
#BelieveAllCanards
it was a political weapon to be aimed at roy moore sans evidence, franken was one of the few caught in the backlash, you see how politico and pbs handled reade, how nbc buried brodderick,
If there's no police report at the time, it didn't happen. A police report at the time at least suggests there's a crime and it's not just the woman changing her mind.
Otherwise, the odds are that it's a woman changing her mind, or not having one at all.
And you don't go to the police because you're "uncomfortable."
When women accuse Republicans -- #believeallwomen!
When women accuse Democrats -- #believesomebutnotnecessarilyallwomen!
He should have used "strawman" rather than "canard".
You have the right to be heard!
Unless Bill Clinton wanted you to diddle him - then-> you're a bimbo, discarded on the bonfire of Hillary's lust for power.
Keep your pets safe. Hillary seeks revenge in clever ways.
"Believe all women" is a left-wing trap. They built it.
how language, like a virus, can mutate overnight
Let's not coin a word: meme.
1980's high school bed bounce that probably is a concocted lie because Blasey-Ford outed herself as a liar with her lie detector BS and her "afraid of flying" my ass liar + Julie Swetnic rape room fabrication over-kill is Way WORSE THAN anything the Clinton Crime family ever did.
I'm not sure that "canard" is the right description.
It seems more like a reasonable description. That is if you are assuming the best of your opponent.
To assume that they meant "all women" sounds like an assumption that your political opponents are reasonable and honest people.
Is there any record of anyone of correcting the record by saying that "We didn't mean believe all women. We only meant believe women that accuse men who are Republicans?"
Because if there were people saying that, then yes describing the "all women" description as a canard may be right. But in the absence of that, or the equivalent of that, there is something about all of this that reeks of the disingenuous.
Too hard to follow all her tortured and tortuous reasoning. I think it's absolutely impossible to claim that "feminists," politicians and the press treated Tara Reade the same way they treated CBF. C'mon. Who cares when "all" got inserted into a phrase. No fair, rational person looks at the two situations and sees anything but a huge double standard.
Whaddya know. Wolfe was alluding to an actual historical event.
Under Comment Quarantine, this blog is an inducement to self-education.
Uhhhh...yes, just saw your "one rule" post. Exactly and good luck.
But I can't resist taking a shot at that "canard, blown into a bonfire." A "canard" — as all of us who took French class should remember — is a duck.
I read that pathetic rationalization for rampant hypocrisy. (Well, okay, by the end I was browsing because it made for such painful reading).
Nonetheless, I completely didn't twig that malapropism.
It's only a 'right-wing trap' for people who behave inconsistently, believing accusers of right-wing politicos and ignoring everything accusatory about left-wing politicians.
"Believe All Women" is implicit in the MeToo movement and always has been. If not believe all women, what's the alternative? Believe some women? Until the twenty-first century, that was always the standard.
The Right didn’t do the blowing.
And the campus kangaroo courts make the charge of railroading on the basis of gender absurdly easy to make.
The left-wing were enamored with witch hunts and warlock trials. Tales of Pro-Choice religion and political congruence past. So, now that the ball of yarns is unwinding, they hope to share/shift responsibility to the right-wing... The center-[wing] trap is due process. #HateLovesAbortion
We're lucky to have people in power that have twice as many standards as I do.
"All" makes it too easy (and ridiculous).
That may be, but given the quality and quantity of her evidence, if you believed Christine Blasey Ford, consistency requires that you believe any and everything.
How about we go back to the old fashioned right to face your accuser, due process and all that other garbage?
"The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations"
We had that. it was called "due process". Bt the Democrats through that away, and replaced it with "Believe Women", by which they meant "Believe whatever women it's politically convenient for the Left to 'believe'".
There is no honest way in which you can differential between "Believe Women" and "Believe All Women". The "All" is implicit.
Because otherwise what you have is "believe whoever has the most credible story", and that's going to often be the man.
So, no, there is not legitimate ground for her complaint, or yours.
You can have "follow due process for everybody". You can have "believe all women", at which point Biden and Bill Clinton are rapists, and every single one of their defenders is a worthless evil pile of trash.
Or you simple have "we have no rules, we have no principles, we have no standards, we just have 'all power for the left'".
And the response to that is GFY
Of course, the Left never meant for ALL women to be believed, anymore than they honor the viewpoints of blacks, gays, Latinos, etc that stray from the Party Line. Remember, these are the folks who pull out the notion of false consciousness at the drop of a hat.
The problem the Left's cognoscenti has is that ordinary people tend to have very different ideas of how moral categories should be interpreted. Ordinary people's use of morality is often bound to the traditions of classical liberalism or Christianity. A striking example of this is the concept of racism, where the Left believes that only white people can be racist, while the ordinary American (even a large majority of blacks) believe that anyone can be racist.
That's what happened with #BelieveAllWomen. If you're outside the Lefty bubble, #BelieveAllWomen is the consistent view of the #MeToo movements demands. But, if you're a Lefty, it was never meant to apply to the gender traitors, who really aren't women, just like was actually said of Gov. Palin That she was not really a woman.
But here’s the thing: I found that the hashtag is, by a wide margin, used mostly by its detractors.
Do a similar experiment with references to Obama's birth certificate. There came a point where references to the claim were most often made by the left, to "weaponize" it against the right. Long after it ran out of steam on most conservative media, mainstream liberal outlets strapped it to a team of horses and hauled it around for public display, so no one would forget.
Distort your opponent's claim and then tout it far and wide.
"Where did you learn to do drugs, son??"
"From YOU, Dad. I learned it from you!"
It's not about a specific twitter hashtag. It's about what the Dems were saying when it was helpful to their cause. The words "believe all women" are just a convenient shorthand, a way to sum up the collective Dem narrative at the time.
The new narrative is, "we never said that", which is bullshit. They were making that argument and if you disagreed, you were a sexist.
Hashtag on hashtag off.
When it is convenient for the progressives it's "believe women" "believe survivors."
When it's inconvenient we get it's nuisanced. "Believe all women" just means listen to women, investigate their claims and then decide whom to believe.
I believe Juanita Broaddrick. I believe Tara Reade. I never believed Christine Blasey Ford (nor did her parents or her best friend, apparently). I do not believe any of the women who have asserted sexual harassment claims against Trump. Women lie, and lefty women raise it to an art form.
I don't know the etiology of "believe all women", but I do know that feminists and Democrat activists did not spend a lot of time pushing back against it the way they're doing now.
TL;DR version; Hillary used "every", and a supposed conservative pounced and asked, do you really mean "all"? The author then wants you to believe it is David French that first made up the concept and should have to answer for Hillary.
Personally, I say throw Hillary into the river and if she floats like a canard, then she's a witch.
Ann Althouse said...
"All" makes it too easy (and ridiculous).
No, "All" makes it honest. If it also makes it ridiculous, it is only because "Believe Women" was always ridiculous BS.
You "believe" Anita Hill? Then you have to believe Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick.
You thought Anita Hill's claims against Thomas justified voting against Thomas? Then you damn well better not have voted for Clinton in 1992. Or 1996.
It's worth it voting for Clinton, because taht will advance your political agenda? Fine. Then it's just as worth it to vote for Thomas even if hill's claims were true, to advance our political agenda.
You'll support Biden even if what TR says is true, because it's worth it to advance your political agenda? Fine. But STFU about CFB, Hill, and all that other lot.
Because if the issue isn't important enough to get in the way of you pursuing your political agenda, then it's unimportant, and not worth our time, for anyone, anywhere.
Pick one
Duck eats yeast, quacks, explodes
Now after decades of one sided hypocrisy, which at it's core is moral and correct, feminists have to try and get us to care about this anymore. Turns out, they never really cared about actual sexual assault.
Ann Althouse said...
>>The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do<<
On the contrary, that's easy to do. Just ask the Conservatives, who have been demanding it for decades. What's hard to do is to make those demands penetrate the immune systems of the Democrats, in whose constitutions double standards deeply dwell.
If you’re going to apply a “single standard”, on what possible basis can you believe Blasey Ford and not Reade?
I've been doing a lot of reading about the creation of the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation etc... There fascinating exchanges, negotiations, and compromises.
But...the only subject that you can't find anything regarding the Founding Fathers arguing or disagreeing, was women's right to vote. They never even brought it up.
And this type of BS is probably why.
Only really stupid people could be lured into this trap. But here we are. Post Kavanaugh, I was discussing the principle with 3 women (2 K-12 teachers and a park ranger), and they were adamant that women be believed. I asked if the rules of evidence in our state be changed to reflect this principle. I spent the next few weeks thinking it was a grave mistake to allow women to vote.
I believe women, and I believe survivors of violence always deserve to be supported and to have their voices heard. - Stacey Abrams
I value women, I listen to women, I believe women. - Kirsten Gillibrand
Sure, "all" wasn't in those statements, but adding it does underline what's problematic in statements like Abrams's and Gillibrand's.
Variants of "Believe All Women" and "Believe All Survivors" were expressed by lower level figures during the Kavanaugh hearings.
Case in point: image.
When is a duck not a duck? When its a canard!
The problem, as I see it, isn't that "Believe All Women" may have been some sort of trap by those dastardly right wingers. The problem is that so many evidently fell for it, taking it fully at face value. And so many more found it's very existence credible. We live in absurd times where it has become difficult to know whether something said is intended to be taken seriously or if it is in fact meant as some sort of parady or satire. And many things that are meant as satire may in fact be taken very seriously.
Great!
Now do Black Lives Matter!
Our Beloved Professor Althouse said
... to reject a political double standard.
And, gilbar says, once again;
There IS NOT "double standard." There is, and will always be, just The Single Standard*
The Single Standard* What EVER helps democrats
The so-called "canard" is a logical progression from the Pro-Choice religious/ethical code.
The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do, but the canard is a distraction.
The "canard" (I reject the characterization) is a goad to try and force the Left to come up with a universal standard, instead of having double standards based on the identities (part affiliation) of the accuser and the accused.
Isn’t this “one rule” stuff “law?”
I understand that “laws” about rape and sexual assault actually do exist.
Such laws are enforced by (1) filing criminal complaints with the police and (2) obtaining a conviction in a court of law.
I’m not aware of another set of existing “rules.”
Perhaps "all" is an exaggeration. I am not an expert on the subject, but my trust of the New York Times is nil so I don't consider them experts on the subject either.
That said, "all" is not that much of an exaggeration. Ford's accusation was incredibly flimsy. She could not specify the date or even the year of the assault, she could not provide a location where it happened, all of her witnesses she claimed supported he story denied it, and even the senator who brought the accusation forward clearly did not believe it since it was a last minute desperation ploy to try to derail a nomination that was clearly going to be approved. We still don't even know if Kavanaugh and Ford ever met.
This was followed up by two more accusations which were even more ridiculous: one by an accuser who basically had no idea what happened and pretty much admitted that she "remembered" only because it was politically useful, and the other one being a gang rape fantasy. We were told these were all to be believed. Frankly, if Ford's accusation, which is the strongest of the three, is supposed to be believed without question, what line would the accuser have to cross to not be believed? Would she have to hold a sign with "I AM LYING" on it?
Here's an interesting thought experiment: What will be the incident which causes the Faludi-minded to reject the right-wing canard that AllBlackLivesMatter?
if it walks like a canard, and quacks like a canard,
...it's probably a canard.
"... language, like a virus, can mutate overnight."
like goalposts can shift locations.
I canard-ly stand this much longer
"[T]he canard is a distraction."
No, complaining about the supposed "canard" is a distraction from the political double standard - which has always been the issue.
Not that it matters, but "believe women," without qualification, isn't much different from "believe all women."
I proved Susan Faludi was a hack when I was in college. Her book "Backlash" was out and heralded as the absolutely unassailable fact based proof accepted without question by the media that opposition to left wing fueled feminism was motivated by hatred and fear of womens progress.
I asked 3 friends to randomly pick 30 footnotes. When following up, I received 7 responses from authors/publishers noted that she misrepresented their work. 1 person was livid that her opinion piece was quoted as "fact". 13 other notes were so obviously unsupportable for Faludi's position its embarrassing that the editors kept their jobs.
Just more proof of the low hypocritical character of the left-wing feminists making up what they need.
Got an A on the paper. Why is this such a delicious memory for me? Because the asst prof teaching the class was a left-wing feminist. She left no comments. Wonderful!
A right-wing canard?
Right-wingers do believe in "believe all fetuses."
Ann Althouse said...
"All" makes it too easy (and ridiculous).
The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do, but the canard is a distraction.
Are you actually trying to cover for the blatant hypocrisy of the leftist "feminists?"
I imagine many are embarrassed at their ridiculousness during the Kavanaugh hearings. #BelieveAllWomen was widely used by the dishonest people that knew Christine Ford was a lying piece of shit. But they wanted to claim some attack on what they saw as a threat to their religion of abortion.
The leftist harpies are only followed by the morally hollow.
Shorter Faludi: The Left has always been at war with Believe All Women.
The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do...
No it's not.
It's only hard when you want your side to be the only one who benefits.
"Believe All Women' Is a Right-Wing Trap/How feminists got stuck answering for a canard," by Susan Faludi (NYT)."
How much money did the feminists raise on this issue?
And how much of it are they giving back?
"... and you’ll discover how language, like a virus, can mutate overnight.
The mutation that is Hillary.
There's a discrete marxist history here. The feminists chose to subsume women, and particularly white women, to the demands of colorful race and gay minorities decades ago.
Anyone paying any attention would have noticed this by 1969.
The rest are lying, either to themselves, or others. Or both.
I don't think it's a canard at all. I think David French crafted succinct and effective call-out of Hillary Clinton's pandering BS. Hllary begged the question, tried to cloak it in a universal moral principle, and got called out for it.
Plus, hashtags aren't the beginning and the end of discourse. Just because French was the first to hit on that particular bit of pith, it doesn't mean the values and beliefs it refers to were invented by him, and didn't previously exist in the subculture he's calling out.
"Believe all women" existed both as a guiding principle and a breathtaking hypocrisy before French used the term, and exists still today. It's not a canard, it's a call-out, and rightly so.
So the prejudicial practices of the Left are the Right's fault?
No.they.are.not.
We are not your father's GOP.
The blind hypocrisy traps of the Left are the natural, logical consequences of morally bankrupt absolutism seeking power.
Sorry.
women's right to vote
The Constitution did not indulge diversity until the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the passage of the Twilight Amendment (e.g. "living constitution"), all bets are off.
Paul Zrimsek said...
Here's an interesting thought experiment: What will be the incident which causes the Faludi-minded to reject the right-wing canard that AllBlackLivesMatter?
Clarence Thomas dies from WuFlu after going to a bar?
One of the things I've noticed with women I've dated from all across the world is that non-Western women - regardless of their skin color - consistently make light of Western European and American women's general nastiness.
They always make light of how being born in the US or EU just automatically saddles those women with baggage, and that they can't understand why they go our of their way to be purposely 'unfeminine'. Women make horrible men, so why for god's sake to they try overtime to replicate us.
The whole #metoo thing had my fiancée scratching her head. In Brazil and other places women want male attention, company, and to be desirable. Nowhere else on earth do women act purposely bitchy over those things that they want accept in America and the EU. It mystifies other women around the world, and they've told me many times.
Elmer Fudd turned Daffy into a smoldering mess on many occasions.
I note in passing that the Democrats have held the US Presidency for 20 years since the 1972 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, and have held both houses of Congress for over 20 years since 1972, yet never, never, never saw fit to pass legislation or constitutional amendments firmly securing the right to abortion for women. Why, it is almost as if the Democrats would rather have the issue to campaign on, than the issue resolved in their favor.
Same for the issue of believing all women. Bill Clinton should have been crucified by his party, but NOOOOOOO!, power over values every time.
The big problem with the article is that you have to trust the author to be thorough and truthful in searching for the early references which she asserts don't exist. I have no such faith in Faludi.
#BelieveSomeWomenBasedNotOnFactsButOnTheirPoliticalIdentity is accurate but too long to be an effective hashtag.
Maybe #BSWBNOFBOTPI?
"But here’s the thing: I found that the [believe all women] hashtag is, by a wide margin, used mostly by its detractors." I'm not surprised. But by a wide margin the #MAGA hashtag is used mostly by its detractors. Am I to infer from this that Trump does not want to MAGA?
Forget it, Jake. It's Calvinball.
"Believe all women" is a left-wing trap. They built it.
...hoisted upon their own canard !
So the Left is going with this?
THIS is why we laugh at them. Hypocrites explaining away their hypocrisy. Perfect!!
That whole column of hers I cant even relate to it.
‘Got an email from the DNC to write a piece trashing #MeToo because it hurts Democrats, but not Ford, because that hurt Republicans; this was the best I could do."
I was reading this, and finding myself not agreeing with the lines being drawn. As if it was just too easy a fit for the purposes of the article. Then I saw the author- Susan Faludi. It made sense. No, not the argument. The direction of the article.
I'm betting that David French did not coin ##BelieveAllWomen. I'm betting that Feminists, like most people, do not like having their words or floating principals pulled out and shoved back into their faces.
Greg the class traitor said..".Because if the issue isn't important enough to get in the way of you pursuing your political agenda, then it's unimportant, and not worth our time, for anyone, anywhere.
Pick one"
Hear, hear!!! Greg!!!
It’s not a canard, it’s a reductio. Those saying, sententiously, “believe women” carve out convenient exceptions. “Believe all women?” points this out.
That's a great point she makes--feminists and other assorted Democrats certainly never meant believe ALL women, just the women making accusations against Republicans. How dare Republicans sully that beautiful sentiment by insisting that we remove partisan politics from our list of considerations when deciding whether to believe women!
I’m always curious about whether people lying to themselves and others (including those pretending that this issue involves any nuance at all beyond pure partisanship) recognize how ridiculous they look.
I heard from reliable sources that in Biden's office, during the after hours parties, he would have all the staffers stand in a circle, facing the center. He would then walk around the outside and as he passed each person he would say: "canard, canard, canard, GOOSE!..."
Admiral Akbar agrees... IT'S A TRAP!
"Believe all women" is a left-wing trap. They built it.
Accusations of rape or sexual abuse fetched from the distant past are explosives meant to destroy the lives and careers of anyone challenging the fundamental power of the left -- to batter down the walls of a sterling reputation built on decades of conscientious and ethical public and private lives, leaving smoldering ruins where productive careers once stood. Once primed by remorseless lies the pitiless missile leaves its indelible mark. #BelieveAllWomen is not so much a canard as a petard. And that a shameless and skillful grenade-tosser like Susan Faludi should find bits and pieces of her desiccated ass flying through the air propelled by yet another time-traveling blockbuster is delicious, but that is the risk all incendiaries and sowers of mines must run.
Before the defenders of Joe Biden can extinguish the fuse set to destroy their power they must excoriate Christine Blasey Ford with twice the vehemence and wrathfulness they of their denunciations of Brett Kavanaugh. But they will not. Feminists are too childish to understand the reciprocity of canard petards and remain silly geese.
Well I googled #metoo and saw a shitload if signs that said, simply and emphatically, “BELIEVE WOMEN!”
So the ball’s back in your court Progs. You can’t blame our lack of specificity when questioning Slow Joes bonifides because your movement didn’t say BELIEVE some WOMEN like your ‘tudes do now. Hypocrites.
I appreciate that tracking down the origin of a saying that can't possibly be right.
It can't possibly be right yet it was still the principle underlying the left's political campaign. They claimed any effort to consider the accusations objectively was an illegitmate attack on a survivor. Amusingly it's these very actions they now support for in-group members.
We're in the bizarre position that the left's admission their political campaign was a lie is supposed to protect their integrity.
Also why didn't Althouse say "it can't possibly be right" during the hearings?
What's the difference between Believe Women and Believe All Women?
What does Believe Women mean if there is no quantification implied? For it to have any meaning, you'd have to be fighting against "Believe No Women", which nobody thinks. "Believe Some Women" is saying nothing at all.
Let's try this...Black Lives Matter vs All Black Lives Matter. Same same, right?
So on the Ronan Farrow piece earlier this morning, Ann quoted Dave Begley's comment that the Times must be prepping for some bad Joe stuff to be coming out from Ronan.
This appears to be in the same vein. Don't be too quick to believe Ronan, and no one on the progressive side ever said you have to believe all women. Lather rinse repeat.
AA, you threw me for a loop with these comments - Blogger Ann Althouse said..."All" makes it too easy (and ridiculous). The key here is to demand one rule that applies across the board to all of these accusations — to reject a political double standard. That's hard to do, but the canard is a distraction. 5/18/20, 11:43 AM
Are we talking about politics? If so, why does "All" sound ridiculous and actual "rules..apply..?" There are no principles in politics.
The feminists should start wearing knitted pink canard hats in solidarity with the sisterhood.
That will show everyone how serious they are about being taken seriously.
The Dems lie so often, they forget their own lies.
1, They lied about Russian Collusion
2. They lied about believing all women
3. They lied with the Steele Dossier.
4. They lied to the FISA Court
5. They lied about "hands up, don't shoot"
6. They lied about "Flattening theCurve" to conserve hospital resources.
7. They are currently lying about Tara Reade, (except for legal eagle Lisa Bloom, who believes Reade, but still is voting for Biden.
8. Their pollsters lied to them in 2016, so they were mad that Trump won.
9. They lied to smear Kavanaugh
On most big ticket political issues, they are liars.
wasn't it anita hill, or one of her enablers who coined that phrase,
I am going to voice heresy here. Women do lie, and on a statistical level, are probably more likely to lie about having had sex voluntarily than men. Part of it revolves around the competing sexual strategies that human females practice. The earlier, more basic mating strategy is to mate for better genes. All through the animal kingdom, we see that in operation, with turkeys strutting to show their superior plumage, to the elkbugling and the bighorn sheep butting heads. But something happened in our evolution from chimps to human. One explanation is that our large heads forced delayed maturation, which resulted in longer dependence by children on their mothers. In any case, it became advantageous to the better survival of children to engage a male in the provision of necessities like food to a woman and her children. Several physiological adaptions, such as hidden estrus, on a monthly cycle, angle of the vagina moving forward (to facilitate frontal intercourse), larger breasts, female orgasm, etc, seem to have evolved to help facilitate pair bonding. For the most part, women do better in terms of garnering male resources when they have at least one male dedicated to acquiring resources for them and their children. Thus, the move from fairly promiscuous sex enjoyed by our chimp relatives to the monogamous pair bonding enjoyed by most humans. But the original drive to mate with superior males for their superior genetics didn’t disappear. It was just suppressed for the most part in order to retain a male partner, since the big reason for males to bring home the bacon for their wives and children is the expectation that the kids were his. A very natural double standard arose, that the penalty for women having sex with a man other than her mate was considered significantly worse than the opposite, since the cuckolded male has squandered his scarce resources raising the genetic legacy of some other man. The answer to this is for women to lie about having had sex with men other than their husbands. If successful, they get the best of both worlds - superior sperm and a dedicated male to support them and their children. They are just not always from the same male.
Anyone who has raised several children of each sex will probably tell you that it was the girls who were more often the sneaky ones, and the ones more likely to lie. That very definitely was my partner’s experience. She grew up with two brothers and two sisters, and then raised two of each. The older daughter had a pretty good scam going for awhile after convincing her teachers that she was the oldest of four(true), and had to take care of the younger ones (very false, because they were each a grade apart in school) after school, because both parents had to work two jobs (very false), so couldn’t get her homework done, and occasionally had to miss school. This ended after CPS was called by the school and tried to intervene. The youngest famously was caught practicing screaming, crying, etc in front of a mirror. She was young enough to be broken of that before she was a teenager. And not surprisingly, both, coming from a moderately wealthy family, were caught shoplifting things like underwear and cosmetics. The boys were much more in your face about their rebellion.
So, why again should we automatically credit the stories about sex from women over men? If nothing else, women have traditionally had more reason to lie about sex than men did.
it was actually about the narrative john fry used to justify the hacking of Michael Cohen's records,
believe only women
with beach friends from the FBI
Believe all women who cry
Partner partner partner partner partner! Bruce, when are you going to make an honest woman out of her?
So to sum it up "believe all women" was not a canard. It was not a canard back then and it is not a canard now.
Since this began this has always been the message that feminists, aka Marxist women, have been putting out. It has always been part of both the explicit and implicit logic behind these trials by accusation. I'm certain that if someone actually takes the time to do it that they will find many, many examples of feminists saying words that amount to exactly this, in this context where a political enemy is being accused.
That's because even if the feminist saying "believe all women" doesn't actually believe that they have less than zero interest in making that clear.
"Believe all women" has always been part of the underlying argument of feminists when making sexual accusations against a political enemy both now and in the past, and I predict it will continue to be so in the future.
Feminists and their allies have never had the slightest interest in making it explicit that they really don't believe in "believing all women" and what they really mean is "believe all Marxist women." Or perhaps we can shorten that to "believe all Marxists" as to being even closer to what they really care about.
Q @ 2:48
Indeed!
Here's a novel concept for Ms. Faludi and other feminists.
1. Judge each claim on the merits, not on whether a particular result hurts or helps the Democrat Party.
2. Accusations aren't evidence. Evidence is used to establish the accusation.
3. The closer in time between event and accusation made, the more likely it is to be true. If you file a police report shortly after the event, that's much better than filing it 20 years later. If you're too frightened to file a police report, write out what happened shortly after the event and send it to a trusted family member or friend.
There's probably more, but if you adhere to those 3, you can get real close to finding out what happened.
The Left though looks thru life with the distorted lens of whether X helps or hurts the Democrat Party, so they rarely get it right.
Lots of Believe all women stuff being posted on twitter from The Kavanaugh shitstorm, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Molly Fast-Jung and those crazy right wing women of The View. I’m sure everyone is surprised Faluti left out info that contradicts her story.
two different points to make, nothing about ducks, so don't fault me, Althouse for wandering offpoint.
1. I am awfully glad to hear us Lovers of President Trump have irritated the left with such a trope, because Lord knows the Left creates hideous hooks against us every. single. day! a look back:
"I can see Russia from my house"
"tea-baggers"
"racists" & "deplorables"
"Nazis are fine people"
. . .
2.
Retail Lawyer said...
"I was discussing the principle with 3 women (2 K-12 teachers and a park ranger), and they were adamant that women be believed. . . I spent the next few weeks thinking it was a grave mistake to allow women to vote."
I know what you mean. (K-12 teachers these days! what they think they know should terrify us all!)
I'm woman, subscribed to Ms. Magazine back in the early days, and have thrived partly because Woman Power has been in ascendancy in America all my life.
But, now Whew! this 21st C "Women's Movement" political leadership seems to demonstrate that perhaps many/most women cannot match good men in leadership and judgement. I have seen it in local Portland politics and on the national stage.
Sen. Gillibrand, from Franken to Kavanaugh is a perfect example: she proved willing to tear down all norms to get the women's way: Due Process? Fairness? Innocent til proven guilty? Ptewy. Those are Hard-Fought Principles won by Men, and I don't want to erode them.
Plua rhe level of emotionality they are allowed to throw into the mix (Hillary's righteous "What difference does it make?!" at Benghazi testimony) is its own corruption and cheapening of the process, what a bunch of bull.
Their leaders and the media know what a high level of hysteria they can generate in us tender souls, and look how effectively they can ignite a wild Mob like the pussy hats.
At this point in time it seems we women seem to be showing we have not matured in responsibility of governing that our Best of Men reached hundreds of years ago with Hard-Won Law. Will we soon? Ever?
Meanwhile, that is making us women very dangerous to our Republic in this era.
... when are you going to make an honest woman out of her?
@Nichevo, there is no such thing. Except Freeman, DBQ, and Maybee.
Glad to see that we are finally all in agreement that women sometimes do lie about rape. And by we, I mean democrats, feminists, and everybody else.
Oh, fuck's sake- the point was always that the Democrats only believe the women who accuse Republicans- they never believe them when they accuse Democrats. Biden and Reade is just the latest iteration of this.
And here is the thing- by believing Blasey-Ford's patently absurd story, enhanced by the even more ridiculous charges of Swetnick and the lady who claimed Kavanaugh "took it out", the bar for what to believe was so damned fucking low that any lie should have easily hurdled it.
Damn you to Hell, Ingachuck'stoothlessARM for stealing my planned 'hoisted on a canard' joke before I thought of it!!!
Fly a burning duck through a rolling doughnut.
The female president of my alma mater said believe all women in an editorial. I can't remember if that was before or after the college was sued by an expelled male student.
I have a proposal to solve Althouse's comments problem. For each Althouse post publish one (1) comment by Bruce Hayden, if submitted. Publish 10 other comments, selected by Althouse, either "on the merits" or at random.
Canards are best when crispy.
Quaestor, Bruce Hayden:
You both, chief among others in this thread, demonstrate why comments add so much value (which I recognized through a monthly donation) to Althouse.
TRANSLATION:
This (bowel) movement is hurting "our" side.
This is plain Orwellian rewriting of the past.
StreamOfObscenities autocorrect, which must be designed by journalists who had to learn to code.
I *still* recognize Althouse’s value through a monthly donation.
Has Biden ever been asked about that call in to Larry King?
@Yancy Ward
turnabout is fair play, My Good Man!
The male and female sexes, the masculine and feminine genders, respectively, are equal and complementary. Now, what defines us as individuals, our faith, religion, ideology, priorities, perspectives, etc., are influenced but not determined by our sex and gender. That said, the Fourteenth Amendment, while conceived with good intentions, by introducing sex into the Constitution, was poorly birthed, an actual burden.
And, diversity, including color blocs, color quotas... left is left hoisted by their own petards.
Finally, rape or rape-rape, the goal was to trap pro-life people and force them to go along to get along with the wicked solution, planned parenthood, including: reproductive rites and Mengele clinics.
it was Tom Foley (D) House Speaker who said:
"The seriousness of the charge mandates that we investigate this."
sauce for the goose? by which, i mean digital penetration
I think that many seem to have a leave of their senses when it comes to this - whether or not women will lie about sex. Everyone knows that girls and women routinely lie, and maybe esp about having had sex. Much of the anguish that teenaged girls experience revolves about having been lied to by the other girls around them. Similarly, the soap operas that many women so enjoy and get caught up in, often revolve around sexual lies, esp by the women. They are always trying to steal some other woman’s husband, or maybe just borrow him for a bit. I used the term “cuckold” earlier. It identifies a man whose wife is cheating on (and thus lying to) him. There is no commonly accepted long standing term for the opposite.
We are living through the teenaged years of our grandsons. The oldest two, 16 and 18, and still in HS, have girlfriends. The older one lives with his. Grandma (my partner) regularly sits them down, and explains the facts of life to them. Sexually active girls in HS with some frequency decide that they need a baby, and hopefully a father for their baby. That means them. She tells them that if they lose sight of the condom they are planning to use, treat it as having been filled with pinholes by their partner. Very similar to what young women have to do with their drinks to prevent ingestion of date rape drugs. The girl may be sweet, but many of the sexually active girls in high school have spaghetti for brains. Not their fault, but if you have any ambitions, you don’t want to be tied down for the next couple decades with a wife whose brain maturity stopped when she got pregnant at 16. Not nice. But something they need to understand.
Again, we all know this stuff, and knowledge of it is woven all throughout our society. So why again should we trust all women not to lie about voluntary sex?
Let me add that I am not claiming, or even suggesting, that men don’t lie about sex. They of course do it too. I think that women may lie a bit more. But I am a guy, so biased in that direction. No doubt some women believe just the opposite, and for some, that may be due to what they have personally seen and experienced. What I am trying to get at, is that it may be 60/40 one way or the other. But it almost certainly is not 90/10 on the side of women telling the truth, and men lying about it. I would suggest that the only women who really believe that are gender studies majors and professors, often with an anti-male bias based on their own sexual identity. That is why, I think that you need to look at the facts of each case objectively, not initially assuming that one party is more honest or the other party is more likely to be lying, based on the sex of the two people involved. And esp not taking into consideration the politics of one or both of them.
Too bad most men and all Republicans don't the guts to call bullshit on the canard that woman never lie. Let's see the howls from the progs when legislation is introduced that all newborns get DNA tested to prove paternity and that men are able to get their children tested to verify paternity. If the kid isn't his, nullify child support if he chooses to or if already grown sue the mother for fraud. Then we will see how honest woman really are.
Static Ping said: Frankly, if Ford's accusation, which is the strongest of the three, is supposed to be believed without question, what line would the accuser have to cross to not be believed? Would she have to hold a sign with "I AM LYING" on it?
That sign would be proof that she had been victimized to the point of false consciousness, making the offense all the more insidious.
#Believe No Women is probably a more useful rule of thumb. For any given accusation it will get you closer to the truth of the matter than the #Believe All Women canard.
Hey Falduci: Please define 'woman'.
Semantically I don't see a difference.
Here is a woman. She has made a claim. Shall you believe her?
#BelieveWomen and #BelieveAllWomen yields the same response.
The only thing we should believe is the evidence, and as with any “he said she said” allegation the evidence is mostly subjective and often tainted by alcohol, false memories and errors in perception.
People — even eyewitnesses — are not trustworthy as honest providers of true facts. Women are people. So ...
A "canard" — as all of us who took French class should remember — is a duck.
S'il marche comme un canard ...
In a country of 340 million people it's stupid to think that stupid people on your own side haven't said or written stupid things. #BelieveALLSurvivors was a watchword for Women's March, the group that organizes massive rallies around the world each year, and as people have noted above, "Believe Women" isn't so far from "Believe All Women."
FWIW: Faludi's last book was about her abusive Holocaust survivor father and his gender transition when he was in his late 70s. Not that it matters. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I would have said "her" and "she" but it would have made the sentence to confusing.
"... campus kangaroo courts make the charge of railroading on the basis of gender absurdly easy to make."
And the rights-loving UCLA is suing to keep the railroad running on time.
Feminist kooks like Susan Faludi have been pushing "women don't lie about rape" crap for a decade at least.
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