(Maybe) Believe (Some) Women (Sometimes)

As everyone knows, Tara Reade's accusations have been an annoying thorn on the side many #MeToo advocates who still want to support Biden.

I'm still kind of shocked by this NYT editorial: ‘Believe All Women’ Is a Right-Wing Trap

I agree with Robby Soave that this is almost a textbook example of gaslighting. Susan Faludi claims that the real hashtag was meant to be just #BelieveWomen, not #BelieveAllWomen. She argues that it was conservatives who added the "All" in order to poison the well and turn the slogan into an easily-dismissed caricature.

I read Faludi's arguments and I'm just confused. I don't see how "Believe Women" is materially different from "Believe All Women". Soave even highlights some contemporaneous examples of left-wing activists specifically using "All", with a writer on Bustle maybe embodying the most extreme example: "What also needs to be made clear is that when you believe women on principle, you believe all women. No exceptions. No "what if"s. Your lived experience does not, and cannot, speak to the credibility of others' experiences. Believe that." I know all this was really meant to be a rallying slogan, and it's ok to cut corners to make it pithy when you're in the realm of slogans. But it's obvious that's not how it played out or interpreted. And Faludi is engaging in some acrobatic hair-splitting by trying to jettison the "All".

I want to nominate this entire episode as the most explicit, most glaring, and best illustrated example of the motte & bailey fallacy. Seeing "Believe Women" walked back at such a rapid pace is surprising even to me. I guess they had no other choice; the prominent Democrats that shouted the slogan painted themselves into an untenable corner. Not in my wildest dreams could I have orchestrated a more perfect parallel comparison than Kavanaugh and Biden. I've been warning folks in my adjacent blue tribe about the perils of foregoing due process to adjudicate sexual misconduct and all I got was stern rebukes and oblique claims that I was defending rape, so this is all pure ambrosia to me.